Carmyllie
by sdbubbles
Summary: Jac, Jonny, Hanssen and Serena take another trip to Scotland - will they fare any better this time around, or will it be as mad and chaotic as their last outing? Sequel to "The Green Lady."
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is the sequel to "The Green Lady" - there will be more fun and supernatural activity, I think, as well as weather-related chaos. It's set in early to mid-December in the countryside.**

**Sarah x**

* * *

"Thank you all for coming to this meeting," Hanssen said as Jac, her ham and jam sandwich and her increasingly sizeable bump entered the office and flopped down on the sofa next to Serena. "Now, after our successful visit to Aberdeen a few months ago, we have been invited by NHS Tayside to tour their wards and facilities. This includes Ninewells and Stracathro Hospitals and possibly Arbroath Infirmary's dialysis unit and minor injuries unit as a contrast to the large departments we are all used to here."

"Sorry to interrupt, Henrik," Serena butted in. As much as Serena had grown on him, he still felt she often had too much to say for herself. "Are you two even allowed within Tayside police's jurisdiction?" said Serena. Next to her, Jac chuckled into her sandwich. Jonny's face adorned a look of indignation that Hanssen could very much empathise with. They had never been allowed to hear the end of their few eventful hours in Dundee.

"Yes, Ms. Campbell, you're quite the comedian," he replied. "We shall be staying in Arbroath, as it is midway between Montrose and Dundee."

"I'm not staying in Arbroath," protested Jonny. "The place is full of cretins."

Serena raised an eyebrow at the Scot. "I see Jac's vocabulary has rubbed off on you."

Returning to the subject, Hanssen demanded, "What is wrong with staying a week in Arbroath?"

"Everything," Jonny huffed. "Crazy folk with bloody William Wallace swords, waving them about on Keptie Road. Never heard about that?!"

Hanssen shot him a sceptical look under the assumption it was Jonny's version of a joke. The man's expression, however, was deadly serious, and Hanssen was not naïve enough to think Jonny would let Jac and their unborn daughter go to such a place without a fight if there really were crazy people with swords. "What happened?" he succumbed, genuinely curious.

"One of my pals on Facebook said this guy was high as a kite walking past the college on Keptie Road and approached a couple of boys with this _massive_ sword," he explained, emphasising the size by spreading his arms out. "He told them to wish him luck, and the police decked him seconds later. And another time there was a guy, on the exact same road, took a knife out on a boy."

"Well, I refuse to stay in Dundee again, and not least because not one of us can navigate the place," Hanssen asserted firmly, though Arbroath didn't exactly sound like paradise.

"I second that. I can't deal with the roundabouts," Serena backed Hanssen up. Though he had never seen what actually happened concerning Jac, Serena and roundabouts, they had told him. As entertaining as it sounded, he wasn't keen on the idea of navigating the place himself.

"What about outside Arbroath?" Jac asked. "There must be villages with B&Bs or self-catering," she suggested. Resigned to the fact his plan was scuppered, Hanssen opened his laptop and did a quick search.

"Where is Car-millie?" he eventually asked, unsure if he had said 'Carmyllie' correctly.

"Car-my-lee," Jonny amended for him. "It's between Arbroath and Forfar. That would do."

"It's a self-catering cottage near Carnegie Farm," Hanssen read off the screen. "That may actually be a better idea when we take Miss Naylor into account. She would be far more comfortable in a house rather than a hotel room."  
"I can make do," Jac shrugged. "Though I don't fancy being confronted with a sword in the middle of the street."

"Carmyllie it is then!" Serena smiled. "Book it," she ordered him. He raised his eyebrows at her for her commanding tone but she only smiled defiantly. Knowing she was right he obeyed and picked up the phone. Within ten minutes it was booked and paid for, and he was able to justify the price in the knowledge a pregnant woman would be safer ad more comfortable.

When Jac and Jonny left and returned to work, Serena remained, and Hanssen didn't like her expression. "Can you try and behave yourself this time?" she asked him quietly.

"I've already discussed this many times with you, Serena," he sighed.

"Yes, well, you've not had the pleasure of living with an alcoholic," she snapped, her eyes betraying her worry that he would act like Edward. "I've learned the hard way not to take everything at face value. So, please. Just promise me one more time."

With a sigh, Hanssen stood up and walked towards her. "I will not get myself drunk or arrested, though I cannot guarantee I won't get lost," he promised her. It coaxed a small smile from her, her hands on his chest. "Actually, I probably will get lost," he added.

"Get a SatNav," she said.

"I don't trust them," he replied. She met his eyes and started laughing at his stubbornness; her head fell onto his chest as she giggled at him. "I'm glad to know I'm so funny." She shook her head in amused disdain and reached up to kiss him, the taste of the coffee and sugar she lived on invading his mouth as he kissed her gently back.

She broke away and said, "I'm being silly, I know. I just..."

"I know," he assured her with a slight nod. She smiled and walked away, leaving him to contemplate how he really felt about the woman after months of being with her. She was strange, in all honesty, and she was as cautious as he was. She said what she thought, but at times she withheld her feelings from him, though for reasons he was unsure of.

* * *

"_In this slipstream of luck and democracy; a victim of chance and geography_," Jonny was singing as they came off the vaguely familiar A92. "_I reap and I s__o__w the face of the Earth; while big guns play games with the __land of my birth_."

"Oh, so they do speak English, then," Jac quipped impatiently. It seemed her decision to sit in the back with Jonny was one she now regretted, and so might he if he didn't shut up soon. As much as Serena liked Jonny Maconie, even she was become weary of him, his music and his incessant singing in a language she didn't understand.

Serena looked out the window and found that there were clouds swirling together overhead, and the cold was deepening. She turned on the heater, causing Hanssen to look around at her. He said nothing but allowed her a little smile as Jac and Jonny continued to bicker. Why Henrik had allowed Jonny's CDs to be played in his car, she wasn't sure, but she knew he secretly found the result entertaining.

However, as they kept driving, she watched his expression change from amusement to frustration as he tried to work out where he was going. The long backroad in front of them seemed to go on forever, with many tiny turnoffs and fields. "I can see us getting snowed in here," she said to Hanssen.

"It'll be fine," he replied.

Unconvinced, she said, "I'm telling you, it's about to bucket down with the stuff," with a gesture towards the clouds above.

"Oh, grow up, Maconie," Jac sniped at the father of her baby, though without listening to the entire conversation, Serena couldn't possibly have said why Jac was saying this yet again.

"Hey! I'm not the one-"

"Will the pair of you just, please, give it a rest?!" Hanssen demanded loudly. Even Serena jumped a little when he raised his voice. He stopped the car, turned the volume of the music down a little and took out his mobile, finally yielding to the use of some technology to find his way. She knew he did it grudgingly but he found the location and handed the phone to Serena.

He did a three point turn and backtracked around the corner as Serena watched the screen. "Um, this isn't Carmyllie. It's Lochlair," Jonny piped up.

"Yes, well spotted," Hanssen retorted, irritable already with getting lost.

"Alright, Henrik, keep calm," Serena sighed. "You're only lost. Nothing that can't be undone." He fell silent as he drove across two crossroads. "Next left," she told him.

He drove down and she ordered him down the side road, where they found a cottage. Hanssen got out and met the man standing outside, who handed him the key and shook his hand before getting in the car and leaving.

To Serena's disgust, snowflakes began to fall as she got out of the car and helped Jac to her feet. Her bump seemed to grow as fast as Serena's had while carrying Eleanor – a fate she did not envy, nor would she willingly experience again. To be that size was not good for her back, her legs or her self-esteem, and she knew Jac was sure to think the same way as she did about it. "Which room are you wanting?" Serena asked her.

"The one with the biggest bed," Jac smirked.

"Well, there's a twin room, a double and a kingsize room."

"Well, even better. I can have the kingsize bed and Jonny can go and find himself a single," Jac stated. Serena stared at her for a moment as they walked into the house, Serena carrying Jac's bags. "Joking!" she grinned. "No, I need him to get me food."

"Slave driver," Serena smiled.

"He shouldn't have put me in this state then, should he?"

"That's my girl," Serena grinned, dumping Jac's bags on the kingsize bed. When she returned outside, she found Jonny on the phone with his own luggage in his hands, and Hanssen had Serena's and his own. "Who's Jonny speaking to?" she asked curiously.

"Bell Rock takeaway. Apparently we're having them deliver a small banquet."

"He's sucking up to Jac," Serena smiled; she took her bag from him and followed him to the double bedroom. "You must be tired," she commented. "Driving all that way. God knows I was tired driving back down last time."

"Not really," he said. "I apologise for my frayed nerves earlier," he added as he turned to face her.

"It's alright. Jonny was about to get a slap from me, anyway," she smirked. "You know, I didn't ask you to walk on eggshells," she added, recalling their conversation in his office. "I only asked that you don't get yourself in trouble." She turned again and started unpacking, unwilling to literally live out of her suitcase. For one thing, her shirts would need more than an iron if she let them where they lay.

For around quarter of an hour the moved in almost complete silence, exchanging glances and soft smiles when they passed each other as they carefully unpacked their clothes and belongings. Once they were finished, they turned to face each other.

"I know you didn't ask me to walk on eggshells, and I'm not doing that," he explained with a step towards her, standing inches from her. "I was making sure you know that I wasn't losing my temper. I just got a little frustrated." He kissed her gently, his hands on her hips, and pushed her into the bathroom door.

"What's got into you?" she asked breathlessly.

"Am I not allowed to kiss you?" he replied, breaking away with a look of confusion on his face. She sighed. The man could be so dense at times.

"Of course you are," she smiled, pulling him down into a deep kiss. He was leaning into her, his weight pinning her back and his hands drifting up her body until they pressed her back by the waist.

"Dinner's here," Jonny's voice announced as they door opened. They looked around and saw him with a look of embarrassment on his face. "Um, I'll just go and plate up," he excused himself from their presence.

Serena started laughing to herself, squirming free of Henrik's grip. "Come on. I'm going to pass out if I don't eat something," she said. She took his hand and led him to the living room, where they found plates and boxes of thoroughly unhealthy food, and that Jonny had started the fire. She sat down and took some food, watching as Jac dipped battered fish and white pudding in curry sauce, grimacing as she ate it with obvious pleasure and washed it down with a large gulp of Fanta. Jonny just looked disgusted.

Serena sat down next to Hanssen with a plate of food and a glass of wine, surprised as he sat closer to her; he never showed such relaxed closeness to her in front of other people.

"We'll get snowed in," Serena said yet again.

"Nah," Jac dismissed her worries. "It can't get that bad."

Jonny and Hanssen glanced at each other, the Scot grinning as the Swede wore a wry smirk. "I wouldn't count on it. We should have stayed on the coast," said Jonny.

"You're the one who put a stop to us staying in Arbroath!" Henrik protested. It was Serena's turn to exchange a smirk with Jac at the men.

Jonny only shrugged his shoulders. "I'd still rather get snowed in."

Serena shook her head to herself and drank from her glass, glancing out the window as the snow swirled around outside and Hanssen sat with her, his behaviour and manner not what it normally was.

Jac and Jonny, at least, had not strayed from tradition and were still bickering like children. Was this trip going to be like last time? Or could it possibly be more hectic? Now _there_ was a thought – was there any way that this trip to Scotland be more chaotic than the last?

* * *

**Hope this is OK!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me your thoughts!  
Sarah x**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I'm too tired to decide if I like what I've written here, but I hope it works :) thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed - I'm glad so many people seem to like this.**

**Sarah x**

* * *

Serena turned for what felt like the millionth time. "What's wrong?" Hanssen asked quietly. She turned again only to collide with his chest. "Oh, for goodness' sake. Can't you lie at peace, woman?" he demanded sleepily. Despite his clipped tone, she felt his arm fall over her.

"No, I can't." she retorted. He may have been half-asleep but she was still wide awake. "Do you hear that bloody wind?!" The gale howled outside the window, causing Serena to bend her pillow over her head in frustration. She was exhausted and yet unable to sleep. "Are you sure the window is shut?"

"Yes," he replied. "There's not much I can do about the weather, Serena." She hesitantly leaned her face into his chest; they had been together months and yet she still doubted whatever kind of relationship they had created. It was not in her nature to accept the possibility of complete contentment. Not anymore. That was a theory wiped out years ago.

She sighed. "Do you know something, Henrik?" she asked quietly.

"I know many things, but what you're thinking always seems to be fairly low on that list," he answered.

She ignored his comment and contemplated what was running through her head for a moment; the nights she had spent during storms alone, the wind denying her sleep, her husband passed out next to her and her daughter rightfully sleeping, were innumerable. This was the first time that she could recall that anyone had stayed up with her. "I don't think anyone has ever stayed up with me on a sleepless night."

"There's a lot to be said for midnight conversations," he mused quietly. "Why wouldn't I lie here and talk to you?" Serena shrugged her shoulders, not really knowing what the answer really was. "It's obvious the sound of the wind keeps you awake. It's a common problem; many people can't sleep in a storm." She smiled to herself at his logic. He was right, of course, but unfortunately the rest of the world lacked his rational thinking. "What usually happens?"

Serena shrugged again. "Ellie goes to bed, and I toss and turn all night."

"And when you were married? Did Edward lie awake with you?" She was surprised at his genuine interest; was this his attempt at getting to know her better?

She let out a short, echoing, hollow laugh. "You must be joking. Nine times out of ten he was passed out or away to the pub. No, he didn't do this sort of thing." The more she thought on it, the worse she saw her marriage really was. She had been more a caregiver and a crutch to Edward than a wife. Their relationship had been more one of reliance on his part; she had, of course, loved him. She wouldn't have married him had she not. But she sometimes feared he had never loved her at all, and at times it made her feel like a fool.

Her honesty surprised even her. She was not so open very often. Maybe it was because she was tired and her defences were weakened, but she actually wanted him to know what being married to Edward had been like, if only to discourage him from the same behaviour. "You loved him. If not, you wouldn't still feel hurt about the way he treated you."

"Of course I loved him. But he spent his time wasted and I was just...wasting my time," she confessed hopelessly, her hand falling onto the plain of his stomach. "Why are you so interested, Henrik?"

His arm tightened only briefly around her, and she sighed when she realised she had frightened him off with her question. However, she knew he was awake when he carefully pressed a kiss into her hair. He had not abandoned her; he had only gone quiet on her. His behaviour earlier had been relaxed – and even just now he had been relatively at ease – but he had gone back to the same old uptight Henrik Hanssen in the blink of her eye.

He kissed her forehead and then her cheek, eventually catching her mouth in his. Huh. Maybe he wasn't as uptight as she had thought then. She smiled into his lips and slowly wrapped her arms around him. "You are so very odd," she breathed quietly.

"So I've been told," he replied. She laughed and kissed him again. "This is one way to pass a sleepless night."

"Hmm. Why are you bothering when you could be sleeping?"

"It's the only way I can be honest with you." His answer threw her slightly. She didn't understand what he was dishonest about, or why he was so, but she knew when he was holding back and it seemed it was most of the time. "And anyway, who could resist?"

"Anyone with a brain stem."

He kissed her and she was astounded by his sudden ferocity; nevertheless she reciprocated it, her heart racing and her head pounding as they moved roughly and yet in perfect rhythm with each other.

What was he trying to tell her? What was the truth in what he did? Once in a while he became silent and passionate, and she knew he was holding something back unsaid. His arms were wrapped around her like he would never let her go, so close that nothing could come between them. If only she could believe that would be true, but she knew this was too good to last.

* * *

Jac felt Jonny roll over for the third time in as many minutes. She was uncomfortable enough due to the fact she had a massive bump stuck to her. She didn't need Jonny making matters any worse. "Will you just lie at peace?!" she hissed at him. She just wanted to sleep but every time she started drifting, he shuffled and woke her up.

"Sorry!" he hissed back. "I can't sleep when I know it's snowing outside!"

"Aw, getting excited about snowmen and snowballing and sledging?" she retorted, her sarcasm particularly caustic as she lost what little patience she had.

"No. Worrying about Hanssen having to drive in the morning," he corrected her.

Jac scoffed to herself. "He's Swedish. I'm sure it's nothing he's not dealt with before." When she had gone to Sweden I search of him, the air had felt like she was stuck in a giant freezer until the weather broke and snow had absolutely poured down. If Hanssen could drive in Sweden, he could drive here; she was sure of that.

He fell silent for a minute or so, and she felt herself become hungry once more. As far as she knew, there was only leftover takeaway food in the kitchen. They were still to do a food shop for the week – the plan for tomorrow evening, no doubt. "I walked in on Hanssen and Serena snogging the faces off each other earlier," he informed her quietly. "My eyes still hurt."

"That's what happens when you just waltz in without knocking," she reminded him with a grin to herself. She could only imagine the look that must have crossed Jonny's face. He never was very good at playing things like that down. "Anyway, you've seen them kiss plenty of times before," added Jac.

"Yeah, but not like _that_! They were seconds away from ripping each other's clothes off!" he exclaimed quietly. The horrified tone of his voice made her laugh out loud. "Although, now I've got over the trauma, it was kinda cute. _They_ were kinda cute. The smile on Serena's wee face..." he trailed away. "I don't think I've seen her so happy."

"It's weird to think that almost a year ago she was sending me to Stockholm to put my boot up his arse," Jac mused. "Although I didn't do it," she confessed. "I lied to her and told her to trust Hanssen's judgement."

"Why?"

"I owed him for screwing him over," she sighed. She sat up and swung her legs around, feeling around for her slippers. Forcing herself to her feet, she managed to stand up and toddle through to the kitchen. She was _starving_. And thirsty. "And besides, he's not all that bad. He's a lot softer than you'd think; I saw a crack in his guard in Sweden."

Jonny didn't reply and Jac didn't really expect that he would; he was trying to keep his opinions to himself, and she knew him well enough to know he did that only because he knew he didn't understand the man. Jac didn't really understand him fully either, but she at least understood his shield and why it stood.

She went to the tap and ran it for a moment before she filled a glass with water, gulping it down like her life depended on it. With pregnancy had come bizarre eating and drinking tendencies she could not reel in, including thirst. There was something unusual about the way that water tasted. "Jonny," she called. She turned to find him piling leftovers onto a plate for her. She hadn't even had to ask. "Does this taste right to you?"

He took a sip. "Tastes fine," he shrugged.

"It tastes...sweet," Jac decided.

"It's hill water. Of course it tastes sweet," he laughed. "You're too used to city water, ya wee townie."

"Shut it," she grumbled. She watched him put the heavily laden plate in the microwave. She leaned against the counter and kept drinking her sweet water – it didn't taste bad, but the stark difference to what she was used to had startled her a little. Actually, it tasted quite good now she had got used to it.

Over the buzz the microwave was the sudden shout of a man, a loud, Scottish man who was not Jonny Maconie, for he was standing silent in front of her. "Who's there?" Jac called quietly, not wanting to wake Hanssen and Serena.

"Oh, for God's sake!" the voice shouted. "Isla, come here, lass!" he called. Jac exchanged a glance with Jonny; the voice was coming from outside, but the lack of streetlights meant they could not see him. "Charlie, get back here!"

"Kids," Jonny muttered. He went to the door and Jac quickly followed him outside. They quickly found the source of the commotion – a man was running after two young children, the boy chasing the girl, ordering them to come back. Jonny stepped out to see better what was going on, and Jac followed, but, as they ran after each other, they disappeared one by one into thin air right before Jac's eyes.

The wind blew across Jac's face as she stood there shocked, unable to comprehend how three people had vanished into nothing. The snow was falling thick and fast into the two inches already on the ground as Jonny went back inside. "I'm just gonna get my phone."

The microwave pinged, making Jac jump slightly as the high-pitched sound shattered the silence. There was a calm around her like she had never felt before; it did not tire her but it did settle her, despite what she had just witnessed/

"Henrik, you better not have taken us to another bloody haunted house," she muttered to herself. It was her first thought on the matter now her brain was fully functioning, and she suddenly felt eerie standing there. Jonny soon returned with his shoes and his phone, and Jac's flat boots and hoodie. She took her slippers off and put her boots on over her pyjamas and her hoodie over her top, following Jonny to where the man and children had been running.

He shone the light across the ground – across the perfect, untouched snow.

He looked around at her with an expression of mingled shock and horror. "Come on. Inside," he sighed, guiding her indoors with his hand on her back. He shut the door and said, "What do think the odds are that we've found out second haunted building in under a year?"

"Knowing my luck, pretty damn good."

Jac walked away from him and took her food and water, switching the light off behind her. A fluttering in her stomach reminded her that they might not be alone here, but she remembered that the last time she had seen a glimpse of another world, she had not been harmed. As she climbed into bed and started eating, sharing with Jonny, she found herself nervous but not frightened. And even if there was something bad going to happen, Jonny was there.

* * *

**Hope this is OK!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me your thoughts!  
Sarah x**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: This was meant to be up last night but this site was playing up again :/ thanks again to anyone who has read and reviewed so far!**

**Sarah x**

* * *

Dressed and in the kitchen by half past six out of little more than habit, Hanssen gazed out the window; he saw very little but snow and a grey sky. Nothing he had not driven in before, but the difference was that he did not know these roads like he knew the Swedish roads. He was tempted to leave Serena sleeping and tell Ninewells that the roads were too bad; she had barely slept last night, and he was convinced he had heard her crying when he allowed her to believe he was sleeping. What had come over her, he was unsure, but he could see she was doubting how he felt about her. _He _was doubting how he felt about her, though perhaps in the opposite direction she was thinking of.

He realised suddenly that there was nothing for breakfast in the cupboards. With a sigh he grabbed his coat and his wallet, and decided to wake Jonny. He knocked lightly and slipped into Jac and Jonny's room, allowing a tiny smile at the way they were lying – Jac's head was leaning against Jonny's chest under his chin, his arm draped over her.

"Jonny," Hanssen shook the Scot's arm lightly. He stirred and opened his eyes.

"Wassup?" Jonny muttered.

"I need you to come to the farm shop with me before breakfast," Hanssen said. "There's no food and I don't think Jac will appreciate the lack of a breakfast, will she?"

Jonny sighed and removed Jac from his grasp, sitting up and rubbing his face until he was fully awake. "Definitely not."

"We'll just get a few things and then we'll go to a supermarket tonight," explained Hanssen.

"Aye, OK," Jonny moaned. "Just let me get some clothes on."

Hanssen left him and went to get a pair of shoes and his car keys; he looked at Serena's sleeping form, the duvet up to her chin and her face finally peaceful. The only time she didn't stress was when she slept, and sometimes he wondered if she even dreamt of her worries. With a sigh he knelt down, deciding, at quarter to seven, it was time to wake her. "Serena," he said gently. "Come on. Wake up now." He touched her face lightly and she stirred. When her eyes opened it was abundantly obvious that he was right; she _had_ been crying. "You fascinate me sometimes, you know," he sighed. "Why were you in tears?"

"Hmm?" she asked, still half-asleep. "Oh, that...just ignore me. I'm being silly." He said nothing, holding his tongue until he worked out for himself what she would not tell him. "What time is it?"

"Almost seven. Jonny and I are about to go and get something to make for breakfast. We won't be long." He went to stand up but he was caught by surprise when Serena pulled him down again. "What?" he asked. She remained wordless and frozen for a moment before she pulled him in and kissed him harshly. This didn't feel right – it felt like she was trying to make up for something, or maybe that she was trying to banish something within herself.

He broke away and put a hand on her bare arm. It had been the same last night. It was like every emotion he saw in her was being heightened, making her act irrationally. "I..." she began. "Sorry."

This was not who he was used to, and she was fine until she had set foot in this house. Cautious, perhaps, of more childish antics, but she had not cried or been unsure of herself like this. "I won't be long," he reminded her. "We'll try and leave at about half past eight. I know we're not due at Ninewells until ten but I'd rather be early than late."

"Are the roads _that_ bad?" she murmured.

"I don't know yet," he admitted. He touched Serena's lips with the tips of his fingers before he turned and left her in bed, confused by her demeanour. He sighed and stood in the hallway and leaned against the wall. His head was suddenly aching like someone had hit him with a sledgehammer. He pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead like it might have driven the pain back in to disappear, but it was no use.

"You OK?" Jonny's voice rang out.

"Yes," sighed Hanssen, walking out the door as Jonny put his coat on. The nurse wandered away for a moment, gazing down into the snow. "What are you looking for?" he asked Jonny.

"Footprints," he explained. "I checked last night but I thought I'd check when it was a bit lighter out." Well, _that_ explained everything. Not. Why on Earth was he looking for footprints in the snow? "If I'm wrong there should be man's footprints and two kids'. See, there were folk out here last night."

"You've lost me," Hanssen admitted. "I didn't hear anyone out here."

"Yeah, well, if what I walked in on is anything to go by, I assume you and Ms. Campbell were pretty busy last night," Jonny quipped, and Hanssen could just about feel his face turn red as the snow hit his cheeks. "I, on the other hand, was up feeding the monster when we saw two kids and a man out here."

"Could they have been covered with more snow?" Hanssen asked.

"You'd still see them," Jonny replied. "Nut, there's nothing there." He returned to Hanssen's side. "I don't get it."

"Perhaps you were still half-asleep and you dreamt it?" he suggested. It was a bit odd, yes, but not anything to worry about. But Jonny's face said otherwise. "Did Jac see anything?"

"Yeah," replied Jonny.

"Come on," Hanssen beckoned him. They got in the car and Hanssen turned the key and waited for the engine to heat up. He thought on Serena again, his head still aching, and realised just how much of a change she had undergone in one night. She had said things he had never heard her say before, and she had cried when she never would normally have cried.

Jonny broke the quiet with the question, "What's eating you?"

Hanssen looked around, keeping back his worries from Jonny. It wasn't worth his trouble, and he had a pregnant girlfriend to worry about. He didn't need whatever was happening to Serena on his mind as well. "Nothing," he finally said. "It's nothing."

He put his foot down on the clutch and shifted the car into first gear and carefully set off through the four inches of snow on the ground. "I'm going to have to shovel the drive," Jonny said. "I'll get Serena to help me. She doesn't seem to mind a little bit of manual labour," he added. Hanssen glanced around to throw Jonny a quick glare, and the Scot only smiled at his own innuendo.

When he reached the main road, Hanssen was relieved to see a little slush but not much real snow on the road. How long such conditions would last, and where they would end, was another matter entirely. But for now he was free to go down to the farm shop with little real effort. When he eventually stepped out, the wind was starting to get up again and the snow was starting to fall fairly heavily.

"You know, I think it's kinda cute," Jonny piped up. Hanssen looked at him questioningly. "You and Ms. Campbell."

"Thank you for that, Jonny," sighed Henrik. He walked into the shop, glad that it opened at seven on weekdays. "What's Jac inclined to eat?"

Jonny laughed. "Anything high in fat, sugar and starch." He picked up a seven and a half kilo sack of potatoes. "A bag of Maris Pipers, some cheese and some butter will do for Jac." Hanssen raised an eyebrow but Jonny just shrugged. "Cheesy mashed tatties are her favourite thing on the planet at the moment," he shrugged.

Hanssen shook his head to himself. "If that's what she's going to eat," he sighed. He picked up some milk and a loaf of bread, some coffee, some orange juice, some sugar and a box of cereal, realising that he really did need to go to a supermarket tonight. By the time they had paid and got to the car, the snow was falling thicker than when they had entered.

He started the engine and turned the local radio on as he reversed around. "...and finally, both lanes southbound of the A92 are closed at Ardestie due an accident involving a car and a jackknifed lorry. Diversions are in place but road users are advised to take another route if possible and safe to do so as police are expected to be investigating the incident for at least the next few hours," the news reader finished before music started playing.

"Gotta love jackknifed lorries," Jonny grumbled. "Sounds like we'll have to go to Forfar and down the A90. What fun."

"What fun indeed," Hanssen concurred. If lorries were slipping on the A92 then he couldn't imagine the A90 being much better off. He pulled into the drive and cut the engine. Jonny took the shopping bags and Hanssen took the potatoes, locking the door behind him. By the time he got inside, his headache had returned, making him feel like he was submerged in icy water while a knife was being stuck through his head. He ended up dropping the potatoes in the hallway, blinded by the pain in his head, bent double and clutching his head trying to relieve it. "Argh!" he exclaimed. Normally he handled physical pain very well but this was pain like he had never felt before.

Footsteps from behind him sounded a million times louder than they should have been, and Serena's voice went straight through him. "Henrik," she said. It was muffled and high pitched like he was underwater. "Henrik, what's wrong?"

He looked around at Serena, whose tired face was filled with concern and a thousand other emotions as she stared at him. "My head," he muttered. "I've got a blinding headache."

"OK," she murmured. He felt her lips brush his cheek. "Come on and I'll get you some painkillers, love." The last word caught him by surprise but he didn't call her on it; he was concentrating too much on ridding himself of the ache. He sat down at the kitchen table and took the glass of water and paracetamol Serena handed him. He was about to put the pills in his mouth when the pain vanished, leaving him feeling strangely light and relieved.

Serena's arms fell down his chest as she stood behind him and kissed his head. "It's gone," he muttered, putting the pills carefully on the table. "Completely gone."

Behind him at the sink Jonny was already peeling potatoes after picking them up from the hallway. "You alright?" he asked. "You were looking a bit peaky."

"I'm fine," Hanssen said honestly. The pain had completely evaporated; it was extremely odd, perhaps even a little frightening, but it had gone as fast as it had come on. "I don't know what happened." He stood up and started making coffee and toast, trying to work out in medical terms how that had happened. But it _had_ happened and he had to just accept it.

In walked Jac, trying to force the zip of her hoodie over her bump to no avail. Coming to the rescue, Serena said, "Jac, go into the wardrobe in my room and get my blue one. It'll be bigger than yours."

She seemed thoroughly embarrassed but nonetheless, Jac said, "Thanks," and went to Hanssen and Serena's bedroom to get some clothes that might actually fit her. Jonny put the potatoes on the ring to boil, and Hanssen was having trouble comprehending that Jac actually wanted mashed potatoes and cheese for her breakfast. That would have been enough to make him sick.

Jonny turned on the radio – probably a good idea if they wanted to keep tabs on the road conditions and closures – and Serena pulled herself up to sit on the counter. Once again she appeared cheerful, and it unnerved Hanssen a little. He had been trying to relax here, hence why he had allowed some affection to show last night in front of Jac and Jonny, but Serena's mood was taking a one-eighty every half hour, it seemed.

Jac returned looking more comfortable in Serena's sweater, looking in the pot. "Cheese and mashed potatoes," sighed Jac. "I love you, Jonny Maconie." She quickly kissed him and leaned against the counter; at least, it seemed, that things between Jac and Jonny were bright and loving.

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**Hope this was OK!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me what you think!  
Sarah x**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: So this is where it starts to split into a couple of different stories. Anyway. Thanks to everyone who has been reading and reviewing so far :)**

**Sarah x**

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Jac sat in the back of the car, despite being offered the front passenger seat by Serena, and watched as the morning began to unfold. Jonny was perfectly at ease and she suspected he was quite used to the snow. Hanssen was calm until he realised that he didn't have a clue where to go if the A90 turned out to be impassible too. And Serena was just loud and worried and, though she seemed not to notice, making Hanssen nervous.

"Serena, I can barely see ten feet in front of me. I need to concentrate!" Hanssen eventually said. Jac glanced at Jonny; she didn't like it when Serena and Hanssen argued because she knew that they were both so quietly passionate and outwardly stubborn that one argument could easily split them up.

"Well, stop being so silly and pull over. You'll never get to Dundee like this," she insisted.

"Look," Jonny chipped in in an effort to reason with them both. "You can't pull over anywhere along here. You're past Craichie already so you're closer to Forfar than you are to Carmyllie. If it comes to it we can park in Forfar and bus it to Dundee. But, for God's sake, don't pull over on this road."

Jac leaned her head against the window, watching the snow swirl around and around. It was pretty to watch it fall onto the trees and the fields and the hills and the little cottages. The only problem was that it had to be a total nightmare to drive through. Hanssen's patience was fraying and Jac could see that, and she could see Serena worrying that they would end up stranded. But there was always a worst case scenario, and for that there was always help around.

Hanssen nodded at Jonny in the mirror and headed onwards. Jac sighed, deciding to intervene with Serena's part in the tense atmosphere. "There's only so bad this can get. Worst comes to the worst and we get stuck, we're surrounded by farms, and there's always the police. So stop panicking, Serena," Jac advised her. Serena turned to look at her and Jac started to wonder what had got into her. She was touchy in the kitchen this morning, every time Jonny cracked a joke or Hanssen tried to cheer her up, and now she was stressing over things she had no control over.

Jac sighed as Hanssen put the local radio on. Jac looked at her watch to find it was almost nine o'clock. It had taken nearly twenty minutes to drive seven miles. She only hoped the dual carriageway was in a better state than this. She could see this trip spelling the end of Serena and Hanssen's relationship if they carried on like they were just now. It was odd; yesterday when Hanssen had got lost, Serena was his voice of reason and kept him calm. Now they were both uptight and both winding each other up without realising what they were doing to each other.

When they eventually got to the outskirts of Forfar, it was clear that the road had been treated here; perhaps only the rural roads were that bad then. It was still snowing, and visibility still wasn't great, but the road itself was not as snow-covered as it was a mile behind them. That was a relief, at least.

"And we're in the relative safety of a built-up area," Hanssen sighed. "Finally."

Nobody spoke, but Jac watched Serena bite back her retort. This was going to be a long day; she could feel it already. Hanssen parked outside a small shop and told everyone that if they needed anything now was the time to get it. Immediately Jonny found his wallet. "Can you get me some pickled onion crisps? And a Twix? And a bottle of cherryade?" Jac asked. He laughed to himself and got out the car. Serena dived out like she was going to suffocate without the cold fresh air outside.

Jac watched Hanssen carefully in the mirror as he pinched the bridge of hid nose. "She's driving you crazy, isn't she?" Jac guessed. "Serena, I mean."

"I'm going to kill her," he vowed. "One more word about my driving, my navigation or my decisions and I am going to kill her."

"She's just..." Jac tried to find an excuse for Serena's apparent anxiety, but she found no reason. They all knew what might happen, and how to deal with it, apart from Serena. The normally collected general surgeon was on edge and Jac wanted to know why.

She heard Hanssen sigh and watched him flop his head onto his hand. "She spent half of last night crying. She's sulky and anxious and loud this morning. But she refuses to tell me why."

"Hormones," Jac immediately suggested; her time being pregnant had taught her hormones had more control over a woman's attitude than men seemed to understand. A sudden thought occurred to her. Serena was in her forties, so there were two options Jac immediately thought of. "Hey, you don't think she's-"

"Don't even say it, Jac," Hanssen sighed. "Either of them," he added when she opened her mouth to make her second suggestion. She obeyed and shut up in the knowledge that Hanssen was considering what might have been going on with Serena, and he wasn't ruling anything out. "What did you and Jonny see last night?"

Jac huffed a little, put out that Jonny had confided in Hanssen. But then Hanssen was the best person to talk to about these things, really. "A family, I think," she admitted. "A man and two little kids, Isla and Charlie. We went outside and they vanished into thin air," she explained. She watched him consider it in silence before she added, "Whatever it is, I don't think it'll hurt any of us."

Jonny got in the back and handed Jac what she asked for. "They have Barrs up here. Sweeter than the stuff you drink at home," he explained as he passed the bottle to her along with her crisps and sweet. "What's going on?" he asked; he had obviously noticed the tense air in the car.

"He's going to kill Serena," Jac said with a nod towards Hanssen.

"You're gonna have to speak to her, Jac," Jonny sighed. "She can't keep going like this or it's going to split them up," he whispered to her.

"Why me?!" she hissed back.

"You're a woman!"

"She's Hanssen's partner!"

"She's _your_ friend!"

They promptly shut up when Serena got in the car with throat sweets and chewing gum. Wordlessly, Hanssen started the car again and headed through North Street to Castle Street to Kirriemuir Road to the roundabout at the Kirriemuir junction, and just like that they were on the A90. It was easy enough and, when left to his own devices, Jac knew Hanssen handled adversity quite well. But when he was having to listen to Serena, he struggled to keep his cool.

People were obviously cautious on this road during the winter weather because they were going at a reasonable speed. Hanssen was doing about fifty on the straights; the only thing worse than going too fast was going too slow. To her surprise, it took little over half an hour before they were entering Dundee and a junction onto a road Jac recognised with great distaste as the Kingsway. She remembered Serena driving around a roundabout five or six times and getting stopped by the police and breathalysed only to be given directions to the city centre.

"Which way, Jonny?" Hanssen asked.

"You can get there either way. You know that," Jonny reminded him. Hanssen glared at him in the mirror and Jonny quickly said, "Straight over."

"Why aren't you driving?" Jac asked him quietly. "You know where to go better than anyone else."

"Because I hate driving in Dundee," he admitted. "I know where I'm going but I don't like driving here." Jac grinned at his admission and Jonny added to Hanssen. "Right, keep going onto Dura Street. And then the first exit on the roundabout." Hanssen obeyed and they found themselves on Dens Road. "Turn right."

"Oh, for God's sake!" Hanssen shouted when a large van cut in front of him as he turned onto Victoria Road, narrowly missing the front of the car. "What was the point?!"

"And _that_ would be why I hate driving in Dundee," Jonny grinned. "They forget that there are people who don't know the road as well as them." Hanssen's blood pressure was going through the roof; it was easy to see he was getting frustrated. "Take the first exit," he said when they reached yet another roundabout.

For once, as they drove onto North Marketgait, Serena remained quiet as she stared out the window. She was sulking. She was sulking and it wasn't doing anyone any good. "Are you OK, Serena?" Jac asked, and the older woman turned her head to look at her.

"Fine," she replied. Jac allowed her a light smile she did not return.

"Straight over the roundabout," Jonny said.

"What is it with Dundonians and _bloody_ roundabouts?!" Hanssen demanded. To hear him curse surprised Jac and she gave a wry smile when she remembered that Hanssen wasn't always as restrained as he seemed. He had, after all, been arrested for fighting in a pub probably not too far from here.

"Next left," Jonny said. "Next right," he added when the car turned. Under a minute later he said, "Next right." Hanssen turned, frustration radiating from him. "Left," Jonny said, and Jac soon saw a sign for Ninewells Hospital.

"How do you know where to go?" Jac asked curiously when she realised he knew it for each and every manoeuvre. Jonny looked slightly sheepish, and she took that as an indication that the story was not one of intelligence.

"When you drive from Kirrie to Ninewells with agony in your knees," he said with a smirk, "you're not likely to forget how you got there." Jac gave him a confused look so he elaborated, "When I was twenty-one I came up here to help my pal shift the engine out of his old BMW. It hit me in the knees." Jac fought not to laugh because she knew that would have been extremely painful, but the image of a young Jonny Maconie being hit by an engine was almost comical.

They got out of the car to find there was no let up in the snowfall or the wind. The snow hit Jac's face as she pulled her coat around her bump with the instinct to keep her daughter warm. Smiling as she felt her baby kick slightly, she let the men walk ahead of her, hanging back with Serena. Jonny was right; she needed to speak to her before she said or did something that ended her relationship.

"Serena," Jac said. "What's wrong?" Serena looked around, and it became clear she didn't even have an answer for her own behaviour. "Is it a woman problem?" Jac asked gently. Serena just shrugged her shoulders. She was being less than cooperative and Jac now saw what was frustrating Hanssen so much. "Homesick?" she asked, even though they had only been away for a day. "Problems with Henrik?"

Serena looked straight at Jac as they stepped into the main entrance to the hospital and started walking up the slope. "I don't really know," confessed Serena. But she did know, and Jac could see that she did and was too scared to say so. But Jac didn't push her – she would say it all in her own time – and she linked their arms as they approached Hanssen and Jonny in the entrance area.

It was only when they approached the lifts that Serena pulled her phone out and started texting. Hanssen and Jonny were talking about which shop to go to when they left here because potatoes were not going to sustain four and a half people for a week. When they stepped out onto the general surgery ward, Jac's phone rang with a text tone and she realised just who Serena had been sending a message to.

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**Hope this is OK!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me what you think!  
Sarah x**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: This is where it starts to get weird. Even by my standards ;) Thanks again to everyone who is reading and reviewing - it's always much appreciated!**

**Sarah x**

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Jac's reply came as Serena stepped out of the lift behind Hanssen: _What do you mean? What's happened? :/ xx_

She stopped dead and met Jac's gaze, regretting telling the redhead of her fears almost immediately. She didn't notice Hanssen backtracking until his hand was in her hair. "Serena," he said quietly. "Come on," he ordered her quietly.

Serena had to shake some sense into her head and look up at him. Now was not the time and here was not the place to start going over last night's events. Her heart and mind had refused to work in rhythm with each other. What she could not feel she had thought and what she could not think she had felt. It had made kissing Hanssen one of the most frightening experiences of her life. For only a moment he had not been Henrik Hanssen.

It had shocked her but she had continued, still sane enough to know whose arms she lay in. But when he had fallen asleep by her side, her own private hell had opened up before her eyes. It had reduced her to tears to see what she had lost, what she had endured and what she may never have unfold in front of her. Even this morning the memory, and something else yanking at her heart, bothered her.

It bothered her until she had felt the urge to throw up this morning, unable to stomach the idea of the day ahead when she was so tired from a lack of peace. A disturbed night's sleep was not what she had had in mind when she went to bed twelve hours ago, and she definitely hadn't realised that not only would her sleep be disturbed, but her faith in her own mindset would be too.

She had to be losing her mind. Nobody in their right mind saw what she saw or did what she did. It was the only answer.

"Serena," Hanssen brought her back to the present. Jac and Jonny wandered ahead when Hanssen gave them a commanding look. "You've been acting bizarrely since last night and..." he began, but he seemed unable to finish. Whatever it was he wanted to say was getting stuck before he could get it out.

"And what?" she replied. He hesitated. He always did.

"And I'm worried about you," he confessed quietly. It took her by surprise; she knew that to Hanssen, the admission of worry was an admission of care, and he had never actually told her he cared about her. It remained unspoken, just like most things between them. She could feel his hand fall onto her shoulder, his touch making her feel safer.

She wanted him just to give her a cuddle and tell her not to worry, but she knew he would not do it; his stupid macho pride did not allow for sweetness and hugs in public. It allowed for steel and strength and everything she admired about him, but not for her to ask for the hug she needed in that particular moment.

Serena allowed a false smile and wandered away after Jac and Jonny; she was torn. She didn't know if she could keep walking this road with Hanssen. She did care for him. She cared for him greatly. But she could never be sure if he cared about her as much as she did about him. Suddenly his hand was on her back, turning her to face him. He looked into her eyes and she felt like he was reading her mind; he knew what, at the moment, she needed. But he was reluctant to give it. She was asking for more than he could give.

But he amazed her.

There and then, in the middle of the unfamiliar ward in an unfamiliar city in an unfamiliar country, he pulled her into the tightest embrace she had ever experienced. His arms were wrapped around her and his face was in her hair. His arms would not let her go even as a group of nurses, presumably just coming off a shift, passed them, talking fast in words she could barely understand. He had only ever held her in public once and it was to undo all the damage he had done in this city.

She leaned into him slightly, pushing out the thought that they had to face the day on the ward. "Listen to me," Hanssen ordered her. "Whatever it is, whatever is eating at you, you can tell me."

Serena snorted slightly. "That's a bit rich coming from you," she retorted. Before she had been able to stop herself, she had said it and she couldn't take it back. Another thing that remained unspoken – what Hanssen didn't want to discuss did not get discussed. She had learnt that lesson fairly early on.

He relinquished her and walked away without a word, leaving her to watch his back disappear through the door after he put alcohol gel on his hands. She shouldn't have said that; it was insensitive, inconsiderate and almost rude. And she didn't care. It was about time he remembered he was not the only one with a past and a box of horrors that had to remain closed at all times.

She stepped forward and sanitised her hands, opening the door to find Jac, Jonny and Hanssen talking to a consultant and a senior nurse. Hanssen blanked her completely and Jac sent her a searching stare as Jonny was in deep conversation with Nurse Stewart. Hanssen talked to Mr. MacEachainn, ignoring her presence.

"Ah, Mrs..." Mr. MacEachainn trailed away as he struggled to recall her name.

"Ms. Campbell. McKinnie, even, if you would like. Having decided I'm staying away from men, I'm considering going back to my maiden name," she said, shooting a glare at Hanssen. Her own irrational immaturity surprised her, but everything today surprised her. "Serena," she forced a friendly smile, holding out her hand. He shook it warmly; he was obviously in his early fifties, and was what could only be described as an islander – his accent was completely out of place next to Nurse Stewart's rough and fast tongue – and he was rather attractive. About five foot eleven, he was of medium build with brown hair and crystal blue eyes.

He took them around the ward and they watched a registrar and her F1 perform a liver resection on a young man. Hanssen said nothing to her, still silent at three o'clock when Mr. MacEachainn suggested they head back to the cottage before the Arbroath road got too bad again. The immediately agreed to cut their time here slightly short; they still had a supermarket to traipse around.

Nurse Stewart stopped Serena as the men left, and Jac stopped with her, handing her an envelope addressed _Serena Caimbeulach/MacCionadha_. She looked up at Nurse Stewart questioningly, who just smiled, "Yeh'll huv tae furgive him that. He's fae Uist an' he spells in Gaelic afore he thinks. Eh'm furever makin' the notes oot fur him."

Serena shook her head in confusion and bid goodbye to the nurse. Jonny and Hanssen were gone, presumably downstairs in the main entrance by now.

Serena felt Jac hauling her aside into the empty corridor, theirs footsteps echoing. "What the hell does _that_ mean?!" hissed Jac.

"Exactly what I said," Serena retorted. "I'm going crazy." She recalled with a chill the scene that unfolded in her bedroom last night, so realistic that if she hadn't had the rationality to remember there could not be two of the same person in the room, she would have got up and taken part in the family discord.

She had watched as Edward argued with Eleanor, a bottle in his hand, and as Hanssen had leaned over a wooden cot. She had watched as Edward had started on Hanssen, and Eleanor broke them up. She had watched Edward upset Eleanor, and Eleanor upset Hanssen, and Hanssen upset Edward and so the pattern had continued. She could even smell baby powder and Eleanor's favourite perfume and Edward's choice of whisky.

It had been real. If she hadn't felt Hanssen lying asleep by her side then she would have believed her own delusions. Even he, for a moment, had taken on the image of Edward Campbell; when she had opened her eyes after kissing him she had been met with clear blue rather than Hanssen's dark irises.

She stared at Jac, realising just how insane that would sound aloud. She couldn't say all that to her. And anyway, she didn't know what it all meant yet. She was lost slightly, and her earlier dispute with Hanssen wasn't helping. It was clear he had taken offence to what she had said; what had possessed her to say it in the first place remained a mystery, but she had said it and she had hurt him in blind frustration.

"Serena, what on Earth is going on?" Jac demanded.

Serena looked down and replied, "How about we use the get-out clause we use with the men: it's a woman thing." A lie, of course, but it sufficed. Jac knew it was a lie, though there was something niggling at Serena that suggested this may not be a form of insanity.

"But it isn't."

Serena just shrugged her shoulders and started walking, Jac at her side, until they got to the lift. Jac just smiled to herself, and Serena knew why; her caginess must have reminded the redhead of her own bad habit of shutting everyone out when she didn't know what was happening to her. They met Jonny and Hanssen and, standing by the car in the blizzard, Serena said, "Are you sure you don't want to sit in the front, Jac?" Serena asked the pregnant woman.

"I'm fine," Jac smiled. They all got in the car and Jonny rattled away instructions to Hanssen as to how to get to a supermarket. When they had pulled off Arbroath Road and onto Kingsway East, Jac piped up, "There's a European Christmas market in the town at the weekend."

"How do _you_ know about that?" Jonny challenged.

"Little thing called the internet," replied Jac, and Serena didn't need to look around to know the face that went with that retort. "Who wants to go? Assuming it's still on."

"It will be," Jonny said confidently as Hanssen drove in silence into the car park. "They don't cancel it unless the weather is catastrophic."

It was over two hours later that they safely arrived back at the cottage, herself, Jonny and Hanssen laden with shopping bags. Jac was carrying a fourteen-inch cheese, barbecue sauce, jalapeño, hickory steak, bacon, chicken, red pepper, red onion and ham pizza, the thought of which was making Serena feel slightly sick.

Eventually she slipped off into the bedroom. She was in serious need of peace, quiet and self-assurance, all of which she was beginning to lack. She flopped onto the bed and closed her eyes. All over again she smelled perfume and whisky and baby powder; she smelled it every time she had come in this room today. She had even smelled it waking up.

She sighed and opened her eyes; Serena usually didn't allow this to happen to her, and she had been trying to relax herself on the way home before being confined with three other humans for the rest of the night. It had worked until she had walked in the house and felt the dread one feels when they know _something_ has to give.

Turning on her side, she pulled her hand over her face and tried to calm herself once more. Again, it worked for a short time. Until she looked on the bedside table. There sat a photograph, and she recognised herself sitting in her back garden, the shed behind her as she sat on an unfamiliar swing set with and unfamiliar toddler. The boy smiled brightly, his dark hair and eyes shining in the sunlight and his little hands clinging to the ropes below her own hands – he was sitting on her lap.

Never had she sat on a swing with a child. She hadn't even done that with Eleanor. She had always preferred to play on the swings without the interference of her parents, a trait she retained even as a young adult. She didn't know any child who looked this this little boy, and she definitely couldn't recall her picture being taken with him.

She turned it over; on the back the date was _2__nd __August, __2018._

Over four and a half years from now. How could there be a picture of her from over four years into the future?

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**Hope this is OK!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me your thoughts!  
Sarah x**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Thanks, as always, to everyone who has read and reviewed so far.**

**Sarah x**

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Hanssen sighed and sat on the sofa, putting on the TV solely to distract him from the screaming silence between him and Serena. Whatever was wrong with her, what she had said earlier was uncalled for. He knew he withheld things from her, usually in fear of her reaction. If she knew of all his many mistakes, she would undoubtedly take a dim view on how her treated Maja and his son, and how he fled from anything with the potential to damage him. But it was none of her business. It didn't affect her.

He could feel his head beginning to pound again and put it down to the strain and stress of Serena's current temperament; he knew his body and he wasn't ill. It was just all the tension and emotional chaos taking its toll.

He heard Jonny say, "No, no, no. You're cutting away half the tattie! It'll end up a tiny wee square thing if you keep doing that!"

"Get me a peeler then!" Jac retorted. Hanssen found their bickering a little amusing, and completely disconnected from his issue with Serena – Jac and Jonny were engaging in light-hearted banter, but Serena was being snide, and he was replying with silence.

"But it's easier with a knife!" argued Jonny.

"Does it _look_ like I'm finding it easy?!"

"A surgeon who can't peel a tattie," Jonny laughed, and Hanssen had to agree with the irony as the drawer opened. "That's a new one."

"Shut it, Maconie," Jac grumbled. "Thanks," she added, and Hanssen assumed that the nurse had succumbed and replaced the surgeon's knife with a potato peeler. The couple continued talking in the background, and Hanssen tried to see a way forward where his thoughts concerned Serena; she was being unreasonable, unkind and unthinking. It wasn't like her.

He stood up and paced the living room until his attention was caught by a painting on the wall. He turned to gaze at it, to see twelve faceless people painted onto a canvas, the background a swirling mass of blue and purple. Despite the facelessness, the men, women and children could be easily distinguished. There were three children – one redheaded girl, a blonde boy and a brown haired boy – five women and four men.

It was a strange painting and not least because it definitely had not been hanging on the wall when they left for Dundee this morning. He knew his brain well enough to know he would have noticed this long before now had it been here.

He went to take it off the wall but it would not budge for anything, no matter how much of his strength he put into his efforts. He went through to the kitchen and got a long knife, slotting it between the canvas and the wall, and tried to lever it off. It didn't work. How _odd_. It was like there was a gravitational field pulling it to the wall, a force he did not possess the strength necessary to break. Or else a strut of some sort, attaching it mechanically to the wall with tension greater than he could produce.

He put the knife back in the kitchen, confused as to how a picture could be stuck to the wall. Especially when he could physically stick a knife between it and the wall.

He allowed his thoughts to wander to the woman in the bedroom, the woman who was meant to be his partner, and her recent behaviour. She had been fine until last night. He was actually starting to think she might be ill – he had seen her drain white earlier, leaning into the trolley she had insisted on pushing. She had bought fleecy pyjamas and got touchy about the size, and she had been fighting back the obvious urge to vomit as Jac's pizza had been prepared for her.

When she spoke, she cut to the bone, and when she fell silent, she raised a wall he could not climb.

With a sigh he walked slowly to the bedroom with great caution, anticipating that she might bite his head off the moment she laid eyes on him. He thought about knocking on the door but after a moment's deliberation, he saw no reason why he should. It was his room as much as hers for this trip. He opened the door and sat on the end of the bed as he took his shoes off. "What do you want?" he heard Serena, curled up on her side of the bed, grumble.

"You to cheer up," he replied shortly. "Or tell me what's wrong if cheering up doesn't feel possible to you."

She said nothing but he felt her wriggle around; when he turned, she was lying on her back with her hand over her abdomen, rubbing gently. "Are you in pain?" he asked her.

She hesitated but she replied, "No. No, there isn't any pain."

"Are you sure? You looked like you wanted to throw up earlier," he reminded her of the instance, when they had stood watching Jac's pizza being created.

"Didn't you?" she reasoned; a wry smile found its way to his lips as he acknowledged that more people than Serena would have been unimpressed with Jac's choice of food. He watched for a moment while she was lost in her own thoughts.

He just wished she would share them with him. He went to her side and lay next to her, staring at the ceiling. "I do wish you would tell me what is upsetting you," he sighed. She turned away from him, leaving him staring upwards without a clue what she was thinking. She seemed to do nothing but think, and though she wasn't crying or showing outwards sign of upset, her silence discounted, he could tell by her very manner there was something she was confused and fixated by.

Without a word she reached over and handed him a photo. He saw her, bright and smiling, sitting on a swing with a child on her knee. A little boy with a smile as wide and full of life as hers was sitting in the sunlight. "Who is he?" he asked quietly, fearing for a moment the worst – that this boy was her son, who, for whatever reason, she no longer could hold.

"I don't know," she whispered. "I've never met him."

"But you've had your picture taken with him," Hanssen argued, trying to find some logic in what she was saying. "How can you not have known him?"

"Look at the date." Bemused by her order, he did as she said and read the date. "Of course I haven't bloody met him," she added. It couldn't be possible. It was obviously some kind of joke on her part. She must have had the photo taken and written the date herself. But it was not her penmanship, nor that of Jac or Jonny or anyone else's he had seen. It was old fashioned copperplate, long outdated. Serena had the clichéd doctor's writing; more than once, nurses and pharmacists and board members alike had asked him for a translation.

He reached out and gently pulled her around to face him. "What does this mean?" he asked of her.

"Nothing," she shrugged. "It's just weird. It was lying on my bedside table when we got in." He looked again at the photo. He could see what confused her – if, as she had told him, did not know this child, how was it that she was in a photograph with him? It made absolutely _no_ sense. Again her hand fell to her abdomen, and she looked slightly frightened.

"Is this what's been getting to you?" he said gently. She said nothing and he could only assume something more was going on. He sighed and looked away from her; he started slightly when he saw a man standing beside the wardrobe with a slight smile on his face. The door had not been opened, and he wore clothes from what seemed to be the nineteenth century. Serena looked around and her eyes widened; obviously she saw what he saw.

Hanssen opened his mouth to speak but the man was gone before he could demand any answers. Jac was right. This place had to be haunted. Why else would a man appear and disappear before his eyes? Concerning these things, he had given up on trying to find science and logic many moons ago, because it quickly became apparent that there was nothing there for him to understand.

He sighed and pulled Serena's top up a little to examine her abdomen. He felt it and found nothing amiss. Nothing that would cause her pain. No swelling, no tenderness. Maybe she was telling the truth and there was no pain there.

Though they were by no means as close as they had been yesterday, she was letting him in a little more, and he knew that was an effort for her. He stood up and straightened his shirt, Serena mirroring him. There was a knock at the door and Serena told whoever it was to come in; it seemed Jonny had learned to knock yesterday. "Tea's ready," he told them. Hanssen nodded and followed him, leaving Serena behind to collect her thoughts. She seemed to be trying to process something, and he realised now that pushing her would get him nowhere. She would tell him when she was ready to, if it was of any concern to him.

He sat down at the kitchen table to a plate of mashed potatoes, mince and vegetables. Jac, however, had chosen to start scooping mashed potato onto that pizza of hers. He had hoped her bizarre eating habits would have subsided by now, but clearly she was stranger than ever. "I saw him," he said, picking up his fork. "Just now, in our room. I saw the man you told me about."

"No kids?" Jonny asked.

Hanssen shook his head. "No, just him." He decided against telling them about the photograph, as it had clearly unnerved Serena and he wanted to get to the bottom of it as much as she did.

It was another few minutes before Serena joined them, shooting Jac's pizza a glare as she sat next to Hanssen. It occurred to him how little concern the four of them showed for other beings appearing out of and vanishing into thin air. He knew people who would completely lose the plot if they saw these things. He would have paid to see Michael Spence see a ghost. Or perhaps Mary-Claire Carter. He could imagine there being a lot of shouting, swearing and pleas for saviour from the unknown.

He offered Serena a glass of wine but, uncharacteristically for the woman who seemed to love wine more than anything, she refused. She elected instead to have a cup of tea, and he watched her grip the counter with unnecessary force while she waited on the kettle boiling. He looked away from her to see Jonny exchange a look with him he didn't like – it was almost like he was telling him to brace himself.

And despite the warning, he found his feelings for her momentarily intensify, even if he would never tell her as much.

As steam poured from the almost boiled kettle, the pounding headache he was able to ignore turned into the sensation that an axe was being thumped into his head, attempting to split it in two. His self-discipline was overcome by such intense, searing pain. "Agh!" he groaned, his hands on the sides of his head, like the pressure would somehow squeeze the pain out.

Jac and Jonny did nothing because there was nothing they _could_ do, and he knew that, but Serena, of course, attempted anyway. Just like this morning, she dug out painkillers and pushed them into his hand, getting a glass of water. Her hand fell onto his knee and she looked up into her face, seeing unadulterated care in her dark brown eyes.

Through the pain came a realisation that the woman sitting with him was one he loved for exactly this reason: she truly cared about him. He had never told her that. Why hadn't he told her?

He brought the glass to his lips and the pain vanished, leaving alleviation and the notable absence of discomfort one feels when relieved of such consuming pain. He didn't speak, or say that the headache was gone. Instead he set the glass and painkillers down and returned to his dinner, receiving strange looks from everyone at the table.

Between Jonny's concerns about hauntings, Jac making abnormal efforts to make other at peace, Serena acting so oddly and his own agonising recurring headache, he wasn't sure he could put up with this for the rest of the week.

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**Hope this is OK!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me your thoughts!  
Sarah x**


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: This chapter is slightly longer than the others, because it's pretty important to the story, but I do hope it makes some sense. Thanks, as always, to everyone who is reading and reviewing this - you've all made me feel better this weekend, because it's not been a great few days.**

**Sarah x**

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Serena turned over onto her back, staring at the moonlit ceiling. In her mind, she saw the photo again. The boy was tiny, and he looked about four years old, his dark hair falling in his eyes. She searched her memory over and over and over again but found no trace of him. Not even a name.

The explanation for _that_, of course, seemed to be that he was from her future rather than her past. At some point in the next four and a half years, she was going to meet this child for the first time. The fact she trusted the unknown unnerved her ever so slightly, if only because it was the only option really left to her. Her ideas were limited.

Was this someone trying to tell her something? Was this the world, perhaps a world unseen, trying to say something? Perhaps it was a force trying to bring her and Hanssen closer. If anything, her behaviour and his reactions were in danger of driving them apart. What she couldn't understand was why she was acting like this; when she spoke to Hanssen the way she did, when she ignored him or walked away from him, it felt as if she was not the one acting. It felt like her mind and body would not work in tandem. It felt like she was not the one in control.

It was almost certain that there was some form of supernatural residing here, and she had no doubt that they influenced her situation in some way or another. These days there was very little she could not believe in. She was unsure of where to go from here.

She turned again, onto her side, to find Hanssen, or at least his image, picking up a newborn from a cot, singing something quietly in Swedish. "Please, just stop this," she murmured. She wasn't sure if she was talking to her own mind or whatever it was that lived in the walls, but she wanted the visions to stop. She wanted some peace.

Eleanor appeared out of nowhere, wiping tears from her cheeks and greeting Hanssen with a glare. Edward appeared behind her, a bottle in his hand, and started harassing Hanssen and Eleanor. The baby started crying, and the sound made Serena get out of bed and stalk around the four people and the cot and out the bedroom door for some peace of mind.

As she sat in the dark living room, she touched her abdomen lightly. She had already considered and denied to herself the possibility that she could be carrying this child, although the mother and medic in her persuaded her to refuse alcohol at dinner just in case. She was in her forties, and she couldn't bring to believe herself she could be a mother for a second time. She didn't even know if she wanted to be. Serena Campbell was usually good when it came to shock and difficulty and decisions, but this time she wasn't sure. She was more likely to freak out than anything else.

She found she was telling herself how she would take to something she hadn't even proved. She was panicking over something she didn't even know was true, and she knew the chances were slim. But she had to know, one way or the other.

In a moment of madness, and despite the fact it was almost one in the morning, she got up and went through to the bedroom and picked the car keys off Hanssen's bedside table, and her phone, cardigan and handbag from her side. She pulled her wellies over her pyjamas, not caring much that she was going out in her post-sleep state. It was the dead of the nigh; who was going to see her anyway, or even care?

She could just about remember the way to the supermarket Hanssen had taken them to in Douglas, and it was open twenty-four hours. With trepidation for many different reasons, she started the engine and carefully pulled out of the drive; the snow had stopped falling, replaced by a hard frost that made her feel like she was driving on an ice rink.

She was a calmer driver than Hanssen but only when she was alone; if she had Jac or Jonny giving her earache they wouldn't have lived very long. The snow was cleared from the roads, leaving slush and ice in its place, so she drove at thirty-five where so normally would have done fifty-five until she reached the Muirdrum bypass and got onto the dual carriageway. It was a relief to be free of the tight bends and sharp dips.

In her mind's eye, she saw a child running around her living room with a cheeky grin, teasing her to catch him if she could. She saw the boy in his school tie and blazer, ready for his very first day of high school. She saw him as a young adult, well over six feet tall, graduating university. She found she wanted it to be true. She already loved the child she didn't know existed.

At Ardestie she noticed the moon shining through the clouds onto the quiet road, lighting her way to Dundee. She was nervous now, and she briefly contemplated turning back and forgetting all about it. It was silly that she could even believe it could be true. It was selfish to want it; she knew she had not been a great mother to Ellie. She knew the teenager's life was more lonely and more difficult than it could have been if Serena had been there for her more. If she hadn't torn her life between work and arguing with Edward then Eleanor might have been happier. She wasn't mother material. She had proved that already.

She approached the roundabout at Ethiebeaton, and her heart leapt into her mouth as a lorry cut in front of her as she came out the exit on the other side. "What was the bloody need?!" she shouted in temper, slamming her hand onto the horn of Hanssen's car.

She slowed down for a minute or so to recollect herself, calming her breathing down.

She busied her mind with biology and maths and realised she was late. Very late. Two months late. And she hadn't noticed because she was constantly busy with other things, mainly her job and her disintegrating relationships. Perhaps her subconscious had even been glad for the absence of the pain it caused her every month, and therefore had not allowed her to question it.

She reached what the local radio called the "Scott Fyffe circle" and took the Douglas exit, and she drove into the car park with a sigh, parking fairly near the door. Closed her eyes and took a deep breath, wondering why she hadn't left it until a reasonable time of the day. She had jumped out of bed when her mind clicked and thought, 'Oh, I might actually be pregnant.' Such lack of preparation was not normal for Serena.

She got up out of the car and pulled her cardigan around her as the chill hit her and she locked the car behind her. With purpose and anxiety, she stalked into the shop, trying not to look like too much of a madwoman. But then who else is out at one in the morning in her pyjamas and wellies?

She strode carefully to the correct aisle and picked up two pregnancy tests, because two assurances were always better than one alone. Rather than experience the awkwardness she would have felt at a manned till, she went through the self-service and paid by card.

For a moment she was tempted to go to the toilets and do it there and then, but she then decided that she would rather drive home without the strain on her mind of either being pregnant, or else trying to figure out who that boy was if he was not hers. Driving was always better done on a relatively clear mind. That, and she would prefer to be back before anyone noticed she was gone. She didn't want to answer silly questions.

Her heart started to split when she remembered that she was not the only one involved here. She couldn't see Hanssen wanting to be a father; as far as she knew, he had lived his life without strings or commitment, and she didn't think he would be willing to give that up. If this test came back positive, it was going to come down to a matter of choosing him or the baby. She could feel it in her bones.

She was soon taking her boots off and replacing them with slippers, careful not to wake Hanssen. She put the keys back by the side of his bed and padded silently through to the kitchen, were she opened a bottle of fizzy juice and downed about half a litre. While she was at it, she had a couple of chocolate biscuits and sat down on the wooden chair at the table.

A piece of paper lay haphazardly on the wood – another photograph. This time it was of her and a teenage boy, and a redheaded teenage girl on her other side, the hot sun beating down on them, evident in her tan. She turned it over and saw:

_ Callum, __Serena and Emma_

_ Memphis, Tennessee, USA_

_ July 17__th__, 2029_

She looked at it again; she recognised herself but she did look older. She was surprised to see the boy holding a guitar in one hand, the other arm around Serena's waist. He was a musician, if his possessions and location were anything to go by. And who on _Earth_ was Emma? Obviously, she was the redhead whose arm was linked with Serena's, but where did she so suddenly materialise from?

"This is ridiculous," she muttered. But if it was so ridiculous, why was she even giving the notion a place in her mind?

With a sigh, she got up and went to the bathroom, and the next five minutes seemed to take an eternity to pass as she stared intently at two white sticks. She was contemplating the future, whichever way things went. Sitting on the edge of the bath, she found very few painless options.

Upon the realisation that Hanssen would not like it, the first test showed its conclusion in digitised letters: _Pregnant_. Less than a minute later, the second said the same. Despite her reservations, her face broke into a wide smile, her heart fluttering slightly as she was given confirmation that she was carrying a child. She put her hand over where she now knew lay her child, wondering how the presence in this house could have known before she did.

She got to her feet and stepped out of the bathroom, walking straight into Hanssen. "What are you smiling about?" he asked tiredly. Her face fell as his gaze, lit by the bathroom light, fell to her hands. He took the two positive tests from her hands and she watched him drain white. "Have you been out in the car?" he asked her. Not the question she had been expecting, but still she nodded her head. "Well, that wasn't smart."

"I made it back fine, didn't I?!" she retorted. Why was he being so unpleasant? Her being pregnant was not the end of the world, after all. "Aren't you going to say anything?" she added when he looked at the positive readings again.

"About what?"

Her mouth fell open. "I...The..._That_!" she exclaimed, pointing to the white sticks in his hand. He looked almost angry, despite the ghostly look about him.

"How many weeks?" he asked mechanically, with no feeling, never mind any joy.

"I'm not sure."

"How can you not be sure?" he demanded. His reaction was startling.

"I...Well, I didn't notice anything amiss," she admitted. It was the complete truth, but it seemed to just irritate him. He was about to snap; she could see it in his eyes as they seemed to grow darker and harsher. She was not prepared for the noise that came out of his mouth when he spoke.

"You're a _doctor_!" shouted Hanssen. "You should have noticed!"

"I'm sorry to burst your simple little bubble of male logic, but when you're completely rushed off your feet, deputy CEO of an NHS hospital, busy general surgery consultant, mother to the world's most stubborn teenager and ex-wife to the world's greatest moron, the last think you think is, 'Oh dear, I should be on my fucking period!'" she ranted at him, annoyed by his actions and reactions.

The door down the hall opened and Jac and Jonny appeared, but Serena was not able to tear her eyes away from Hanssen. How could he react like this? His words hurt her more than they should have, but this was his child as well. He must have felt something other than the anger he put on show about the situation.

"What's going on?" Jac asked, breaking the intense silence Serena felt falling over them all.

Serena could only whisper, "I'm pregnant."

"Oh!" Jonny exclaimed. "Congratulations!" Serena glared at him. "No? Sorry," he muttered.

Hanssen spoke once more, and Serena was horrified. "This isn't my problem."

"It shouldn't be a problem at all!" Serena shouted at him, fighting back tears at his seeming lack of care, and refusal to be a father. Jonny pushed past Hanssen and took Serena's arm, letting Jac guide her into Jac and Jonny's bedroom. She was appalled that Hanssen didn't want anything to do with this, and therefore her.

As Jac shut the door, Jonny said to Hanssen, "Well, you're being about as much use as a bag of green tatties!"

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**Hope this is alright!  
Please feel free to drop me a review and tell me what you think!  
Sarah x**


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: This is probably pretty crap because I've been writing it in the middle of what may well be the worst week I've had in a good few years. So I apologise it's hopeless. Thanks, as usual, to everyone who reads and reviews!**

**Sarah x**

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Jonny watched as Hanssen walked away from him, his face unfeeling even after getting an insult thrown at him for the treatment of his pregnant partner. They somehow ended up in the living room, Hanssen sitting on the sofa and Jonny leaning against the wall. He stared at the floor door a few moments and resisted the urge to go over there and physically shake some proper emotion into the man.

Jonny looked up to see Hanssen believing his own lies. He knew the could Swede felt something for Serena. "Has anybody ever told you you can be a right arsehole?" Jonny demanded, his polite manner nothing less than sheer sarcasm.

"It's been mentioned."

"No much bloody wonder! If this is how you treat the people you love, I'd hate to be your enemy," he informed Hanssen. The hurt that flashed in his eyes didn't bother Jonny. He needed a talking to over this.

Hanssen looked up at him. "Who mentioned anything about love? She is brash, she is very much above her station and she is unobservant in anything that doesn't involve numbers or a scalpel."

"That's not fair."

"It is more than fair," Hanssen snapped. "Ms. Campbell is a doctor, not to mention the fact she is already a mother. She should have realised before now."

Jonny was astounded, and angry that Hanssen was looking at things like this. "I'm sorry, but do you realise how bloody hard that woman works?!" he demanded of the icy man who was currently, in essence, freeing himself of any responsibility. It was selfish, and it was cruel, and Jonny struggled to comprehend how Hanssen's conscience allowed it. The way he was treating Serena's situation, with cold contempt, was something Jonny could neither understand nor justify. "She spends half her life running around the hospital fixing other people and the other half at home trying to fix her family. She has more to think about than just her own biology. How can you be like this?!"

Hanssen was not looking at him, and it annoyed Jonny. There was nothing more frustrating than speaking to someone who would not look him in the eye. "I don't want to get involved." Jonny had always known Hanssen was a cold man, pretty much the opposite of quick-tempered, passionate and often loud Serena Campbell, but he had always thought the man's heart was a good one until now.

"You're already _involved_," Jonny pointed out. "And she's not Ms. Campbell. She's Serena. You're a bit beyond the point of office names, don't you think?"

"Oh, just be _quiet_, Nurse Maconie!" Hanssen protested.

"No." Hanssen looked around; it seemed that being disobeyed was something foreign to him. That had to be part of his problem. He had got himself so used to getting his own way by his own means that when people denied him and rebelled against him, he struggled to deal with it. Was this how he saw Serena's pregnancy? A rebellion?

Hanssen stood up and Jonny immediately regained his full height, even though he was the shorter of the two, though he was far broader and burlier than Hanssen was. He blocked the door. "Move," Hanssen ordered him.

"Where are you going?" Jonny asked, although he had a feeling of what the plan was.

"I'm going to get a train home. I'll walk to Muirdrum and get a bus to Dundee, where I can get a train. I'll leave you all the car and you can complete your trip while I return to Holby."

"The hell you are," Jonny retorted. "You can't just walk away from your _pregnant girlfriend_," he exclaimed at Hanssen.

"Watch me," he retorted. He had never seen him so defiant, or so cruel. He wasn't a cruel man. Usually. Jonny had seen kindness in Hanssen before now, so he couldn't understand what was driving him to desert those who tried to love him. "Move," he commanded again, but Jonny stood tall in the doorway. If he could do anything about it, Hanssen wasn't getting out of his responsibility, if not as a father then as a partner, because, whether she intended to follow through with her pregnancy or not, Serena was going to need him to be a man.

Hanssen's usually non-existent temper was rising rapidly, and Jonny was slightly wary, because he had never seen the full extent of his temper. He had seen flashes of a human being when he had opened up to Serena, argued with Serena and kissed Serena. Serena brought out his humanity, in all its madness and glory. "Don't be stupid," Jonny cautioned him.

"Move," he repeated for a third time.

"_No_!"

"I mean it. Don't think I won't go through you."

"Go on then."

Hanssen's blood pressure was clearly through the roof, and he looked like he was in physical pain. Maybe his elusive headache had returned. Or maybe that was him trying to keep a lid on his temper.

"I'm warning you," growled Hanssen. His temper was just below the skin and Jonny saw the danger in his eyes. He was about to lose it. But Jonny would not back down.

"And I'm warning you."

"Fuck _off_!" Hanssen shouted; that took Jonny by surprise. He came across as the most polite man on the planet and he had just cursed at the top of his voice. But Jonny could only smile cynically, shake his head and take a daring step towards him. It was a shock when the force of a solid fist collided with his jaw, knocking him backwards into the lobby wall. He tasted blood in his mouth when the inside of his cheek hit his teeth, and his bottom lip split.

"What on Earth is going on?!" Serena's shout echoed through the hall. Jonny looked up and wiped his lip with the back of his hand, only to find his skin stained red with blood. "You two could wake the dead!"

Jonny met Serena's gaze as she stood in the doorway of his and Jac's bedroom, and he silently apologised for shouting if it was bothering her. "He's gonna walk out on you," Jonny said with a glare at Hanssen, who stood silent and frozen in the aftermath of the slip of his control.

"He can do what he wants," Serena announced clearly; Jac soon approached behind Serena, a look of confusion and enlightenment crossing her face simultaneously. "For all the help Edward gave me, I've raised Eleanor as a single mother. I can do it again." Jonny quietly admired her strength of will and mind, and he realised that perhaps Serena could settle this. "I don't need Henrik. I want him. I can live perfectly fine without him, but I would prefer to live with him. His child will be perfectly fine without him, but better with his presence. But it's up to him. If he wants to run away then let him. He's only running from himself." Her gaze turned to Hanssen, whom she had not looked at during the entire time she had spoken until now. "You can run all you want, but you'll never outrun yourself, Henrik."

Jonny stared at Hanssen. All the Swede said was, "I can and I will."

That annoyed Jonny yet again. All he was doing was leaving a kid without a dad, and he had no doubt that, if the man put his mind to it, Hanssen would make a damn good dad. "Are you soft in the head or something?" Jonny demanded through the pain and blood in his mouth. "Have you listened to a word I've said?!"

"It's after two in the morning," Jac grumbled. "Will you just all get to bed?"

Jonny did not reply, holding his stare against Hanssen's. "Would you mind clearing the hall, Nurse Maconie?" Hanssen asked, his politeness extreme.

"Yes, I would mind, actually," Jonny retorted. This was where he had an advantage over Hanssen. He was intent on making him do what he – and the rest of the world – know was right but what Hanssen was failing to see. "If it means you're going to be a coward and walk out on Serena and your baby, then yes, I mind."

"Really?" Hanssen snapped. There was the pale whiteness of physical pain in his face once more, and Jonny could only assume that his headache had returned. The biggest problem now, however, that it was not lengthening the short fuse Hanssen had quickly developed, and it was only making him volatile.

"One more word and I'm driving tomorrow morning!" Jac threatened. As much as he didn't fancy the idea of being passenger to a pregnant Jac Naylor in Dundee in the winter weather, he was willing to temporarily sacrifice his sanity in the car to stop the madness occurring right there in front of him.

"Yes, really," Jonny answered.

"Right, that's it settled!" Jac said over them. "I'm driving. I'm going back to bed. Try and refrain from murdering each other. Not really in the mood for cleaning up a bloodbath." She turned away and Jonny knew she was serious about the punishment of her driving.

"Go to bed," Jonny advised. "Sleep on it. You're not going to get a train or a bus at two in the morning anyway." Hanssen said nothing but pushed past him and disappeared into his bedroom. "Unbelievable," Jonny shook his head. "You OK?" he asked Serena. She nodded and took him into his bedroom.

"I'll clean that up for you," said Serena, pointing at his face. She disappeared and he heard her filling the kettle to boil water completely clean to tend to his wounds.

"This is mad," Jonny sighed.

"Hanssen's scared," Jac said from the bed, and Jonny sat next to her. "I mean, of course, being scared is no excuse for abandoning your kid. But I get it. Having such a strong bond with anyone terrifies him because once it's there, it's irreversible."

Jac's insight was quite wise, though her opinion surprised Jonny, given what she had told him of her experience with parents who abandoned their children. "She's going to need him."

Jac snorted and said, "Serena doesn't need him. She wants him in her life, like she said, but she can live without."

"I just don't want him to hurt her," Jonny admitted quietly, his mouth still painful and lip still bleeding.

"My, my," she laughed. "Are you trying to tell me Serena Campbell has grown on you?!"

"Maybe," he smiled. "She's not as bad as she wants us to think."

The conversation quickly ended when Serena entered the room with cotton wool, a hand towel, TCP and boiled water, and she sat next to Jonny. "This might-"

"It's gonna sting like buggery," Jonny supplied for her. "I know." She smiled and soaked cotton wool in TCP and he winced as she dabbed at his lip with it, the taste and smell burning his throat. She soaked another piece in hot water and washed it out, repeating the procedure with the cut on his cheek. "Is it deep?"

"No," she assured him. "No, it'll be fine."

Relieved that a trip to minor injuries was not called for, Jonny was able to relax a bit; he still wanted to go through there and knock some sense into Hanssen, but he was proud of himself for keeping his hands to himself and not walloping the fool back. Ten years ago Hanssen would have come out of that far worse off than he himself would have.

"So much for Henrik behaving himself," Serena muttered, patting his face dry. "Are your teeth OK?" she asked.

"Yeah, I think so." Jonny wondered briefly what her first musing actually meant but figured it was too ridiculous a time to ponder upon these things. "He'll come round," he said.

"No, he won't," Serena contradicted him with a sad smile. "When Henrik Hanssen makes up his mind, his mind is made up." She stood up and collected the waste and surplus of her supplies. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," he and Jac said in unison; Serena turned out the light and shut the door behind her, leaving Jonny to crawl back into bed. As Jac leaned her head against his chest and quickly fell back asleep, Jonny was left wondering what was going to happen. He heard Serena enter her bedroom as his own consciousness wavered, and he noted that she had not slept in the spare room, despite Hanssen's attitude. She was a strange woman but, now she was showing her true colours, he couldn't help but be impressed by her mature mindset. She wasn't going to try and change Hanssen, even if it was what he needed, because she knew it was a futile waste of her time and her energy.

Jonny, however, was still unhappy with Hanssen's attitude. He hadn't even given the idea of parenthood any thought before he informed Serena it was not his problem. That wasn't fair. It was his child as much as hers. He only hoped he would be a better father to his daughter than that.

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**Hope this is OK!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me your thoughts!  
Sarah x**


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: Hello again. This is a bit of an odd chapter and it's probably slightly too long, but oh well. Thanks again to everyone who has read and reviewed so far!**

**Sarah x**

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Serena sat in the front passenger seat of the car with a sigh. It had gone from snowing to extremely hard frost overnight. "I thought you were joking when you said you were going to drive," Hanssen said from the back.

"I did warn you," smirked Jac, pushing the seat back a bit to fit her bump behind the steering wheel. Hanssen sighed, and Serena watched Jonny glare at him; he was sticking to his guns over all this, and she was touched he wanted to fight her corner, but she didn't want anyone thinking she was too weak to do it for herself.

"Point taken," he muttered. Serena exchanged a quiet smile with Jac, knowing she was punishing him for his behaviour. She wished they would all just let it go; she had every intention of dealing with this situation. She knew she could do just about anything she properly set her mind to, and that included raising another child, with or without Henrik.

She started the car and Serena groaned when the outside temperature on the dash read to be -19°C. Lovely. It was actually colder than a freezer. Even through her gloves, hat, scarf, cardigan and coat, she could feel it sting her skin. Her face was going numb as well; she couldn't feel her nose.

It was all going fine until they found themselves in the heart of Dundee, Jac having taken only one wrong turn and ended up on the wrong side of the city. Jonny was trying to help her rectify it but it wasn't going well, and Jac was just getting stressed about it. "Just take the bus lane," Jonny advised her when they somehow ended up on the Meadowside turn off.

"You can't do that!" Jac protested, seemingly outraged by the suggestion.

"It'll take you back onto the Kingsway," he promised.

"If I get that far without getting pulled over!" she argued.

"It's Dundee! There'll be more cars in the bus lane than bloody buses!" he assured her. Serena sighed and switched the radio on.

"...all students of Dundee and Angus College are advised of the following," the news reader announced. "Those who work and study in the construction workshops on the Arbroath campus and motor vehicle, welding, engineering and construction departments on the Kingsway campus are advised that these departments are out of action for today as temperatures indoors in both workshops and classrooms have been deemed too cold for study. All apprentices are to go to their work placement if possible, or else engage in personal study. If in doubt whether to attend college, please contact the main reception or your EIP tutor. Meanwhile, Rosemount Primary School is closed to all pupils and staff due to several burst pipes. Andover Primary School is closed to all staff and pupils as there is currently no heating. Carmyllie Primary School is closed to all staff and pupils as it is currently inaccessible due to extremely icy road conditions. Carnoustie High School is closed to pupils who use buses to attend school but all pupils who can safely get to school are to do so..."

"That's a lot of happy kids," Jonny laughed.

"And a lot of parents stuck for childcare," Hanssen added, and Serena had to roll her eyes. Why did he have to see the downside to everything, _all_ the time?

"Never mind the bloody kids!" Jac shouted. "Where do I go?" Serena looked around her, and saw immediately what was confusing Jac. There were three lanes, and it was impossible to understand which one to take. And it was too late now anyway. They were rapidly approaching the bridge, and that was the one route she knew they shouldn't have taken.

Even Serena started to panic slightly as they drove onto the bridge. "Oh, brilliant, Miss Naylor," Hanssen snapped. "You're taking us to Fife."

"It's OK," Jonny said quickly, and Serena noticed him glare at Hanssen when she looked in the mirror at them. "There's a circle at each end for a reason," he explained. "You're not the first and you definitely won't be last the last. Somebody else'll do it in half an hour's time, probably."

"The fact she's not the only person who has done it does not make it any more an intelligent thing to do, and neither does the fortunate coincidence that there is an easy way back into the city," Hanssen said. As much as she wanted to try and keep the peace, Hanssen's attitude was getting on her nerves. Whatever crap he was feeling, it wasn't Jac's fault. It wasn't Jonny's fault. It was not Serena's fault. It was Hanssen's fault, but he seemed to want to blame the whole world for his own actions.

Serena turned around and stared him in the face. "If you've not got anything nice to say, Henrik, keep your trap shut."

"As you wish, Ms. Campbell," he replied stonily. She closed her eyes for a moment and reigned her temper in; the temptation to jump over that seat and beat some sense into him was enormous. "You had better turn around in case Miss Naylor manages to crash as well as getting lost. We wouldn't want your spawn in danger."

Serena's mouth fell open in shock. She had never, ever, in all the time she'd known him, heard anything so venomous leave his mouth before. She glanced at Jonny – he looked like he wanted to knock Hanssen's head off his shoulders for that comment. "If you _ever_ speak to me like that again," Serena growled at him, "I will make your life a living hell. Do you understand me?"

She hadn't wanted to lose her cool but he had pushed her one step too far. He could insult her if he wanted, but talking about her children like that, both born and unborn, and especially when one of them was his, was something she would not stand for. She hadn't allowed it from Edward when he was drunk and she wasn't going to allow it from Hanssen.

He said nothing, and she knew better than to expect an apology, so she turned around and listened to the radio as Jac found her way back into Dundee. Why was he being like this? It was a baby, not a bomb. A baby could do him no real harm, except perhaps make him feel something that was intense and involuntary. But that was what he was needing anyway. It was high time he learned to love without restraint and without fear. She wasn't going to hurt him, at least not intentionally, and neither was his child. It wasn't fair on any of the three of them.

"Right, we'll get you back on the Kingsway," Jonny announced cheerily. Serena had to applaud him for keeping the morale up, despite his obvious annoyance. She knew he could have easily swung for Hanssen for the last thing he had said.

"Pitkerro Road?" Jac asked after about ten minutes. "This isn't right, is it?"

"Oh, for crying out loud," Hanssen muttered. "Miss Naylor, if you are incapable of navigating then please find a safe place to pull over and allow me to drive." Serena closed her eyes and silently counted to ten. She was going to kill him. Two days ago he had been relaxed and pleasant and now he was acting like a complete moron.

"I am perfectly capable, thank you!" Jac snapped. She went over another roundabout, and the look on Jonny's face told Serena even he did know where he was going now. Jac took a right turn. "Whitfield," she said. "We're on Whitfield Drive." She turned again, and read the sign. "Whitfield Avenue. I take it they call this place Whitfield then," she grumbled. "And it's a dead end. _Fabulous_."

Serena grinned at the sarcasm in her voice as Jac did a three-point turn and headed back the way she came. She came off a roundabout at Lothian Crescent and then down Summerfield Avenue. "Whitfield Parish Church," she read. "Drumgeith Road," she said the junction. Serena remembered suddenly this was where they had taken a wrong turn before while trying to find Douglas.

"Turn right," Serena ordered her. Jac glanced around. "Trust me. It takes you to Douglas Road, because I went left last time and ended up on the wrong road."

"OK," Jac said, taking a deep breath. "OK." She turned and they soon found themselves on the Kingsway once more, and Jonny was able to give Jac the right directions to Ninewells. They were to be in the ED today, and Serena was sure it was going to be manic.

To her surprise, when they stepped into the ED, they were met by the islander, Mr. MacEachainn once more. Serena hadn't even opened the envelope he had left for her, too distracted by her thoughts of her family, her partner and her pregnancy. "Ah, Serena," he said, and she smiled at him when he shook her hand warmly. "How lovely to see you again. I'm afraid Mrs. Carnegie is stuck for childcare today – her daughter's school has been shut – so I shall cover things down here today. Now," he addressed the four of them. "I cleared this with our Clinical Director, so if you feel like getting stuck in, please feel free. We're short on staff today, as you can imagine."

"Of course," Serena smiled. "Where can I start?"

"Mrs. Iona Murray," he said, guiding her to a bed. "I'd like you and Mr. Hanssen to attend to her. Nineteen-year-old mechanic, just had an accident at work." On the bed sat a girl in a navy blue boilersuit, with a boy sat at her bedside. "Waiting on bloods and an x-ray. Suspected broken leg."

"OK," Serena smiled, and Mr. MacEachainn walked away to guide Jac and Jonny to a patient. "So," she smiled at Iona. "What happened here?"

"The roof on the garage leaks and it froze overnight," the girl explained. "I slipped off the ramp when I was gettin' round from the driver's side door to the engine bay 'cause there was ice on the ramp. It wasn't that high 'cause the ramp was only half up but I landed funny on my leg." Her accent was thick but she was making an effort to help Serena understand her, for which she was grateful.

"Ah," Serena said.

"You shouldn't've been up there in the first place," grumbled the young man next to her, taking Iona's hand in his.

"And you are?" Hanssen demanded shortly.

"Macauley, Iona's husband. That OK wi' you, pal?" he retorted, and Serena smirked as Hanssen fell silent. It was a very young age to be married, but Serena knew what it was like to be young and in love. Iona's face drained white and Serena noticed before either of the men did.

"Is there any pain, anywhere other than your leg?" Serena asked, rubbing alcohol gel into her hands. Iona touched her abdomen and Serena felt where she said the pain was.

Iona said, "It's no' that bad."

"Henrik, get me an ultrasound, will you?" she asked him; she didn't even look at him before she added to Iona, "When you fell, did you fall on any objects on the floor? Spanners, ratchets, sockets, anything like that?"

"I'd only just started. Floor was clear," she explained. There was no bruising and little tenderness, and no evidence that she had been struck or fallen on anything other than the floor. Hanssen returned with the ultrasound scanner and Iona seemed startled, pushing her dark brown fringe out of her eyes. "What's up?"

"Just keep calm," Serena replied. "This will be cold." She started scanning and called Hanssen over when she saw what was causing the discomfort. "Do you see what I see?" she asked him. He nodded curtly.

Macauley piped up impatiently, "Just spit it oot, will ye?!"

"There's nothing wrong as such," Serena began. "But you do happen to be pregnant."

"You're kiddin'," Iona protested.

"Nope," Serena smiled. She turned the monitor to let her see, and watched as the young woman's face broke into a smile and Macauley took her hand in both of his, kissing it gently. "I can't see any problems but I will get someone from obs and gynae to come and have a look."

She glanced at Hanssen, his face unreadable, and realised that this young couple, who were going to have many hurdles along the way in the form of work, finance, maturity and inexperience, were happier to be expecting a baby than Hanssen was. It wasn't right. These two were not even out of their teens yet and they were so obviously over the moon, despite the work problems it may cause for a young woman who worked as a mechanic. They loved each other and Serena had no doubt they would find a way around the problems, because they would work as a team.

With a slightly sad smile at Hanssen, she walked away when there was nothing more at the moment she could do for her patient, only to be intercepted by Mr. MacEachainn. "Would you like me to show you around the department?" he asked her, and she felt uncomfortable with the amount of attention he was giving her.

She had an idea of how to put him off and she replied, "Hmm. I'm pregnant. With _his_ child," she said, pointing at Hanssen, who was still with Iona. "Still interested?" Mr. MacEachainn said nothing but the look on his face was priceless. "Thought not," she smirked. She walked away with the satisfaction that she had put the two men who hassled her the most back in their respective corners.

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**Hope this is alright!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me what you think!  
Sarah x**


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: I'm not sure I like this chapter very much, but then again it is after one in the morning and I've had a really exhaustive week so far - and it's only the early hours of Wednesday! As always, thank you to everyone who is reading and reviewing!**

**Sarah x**

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It was one in the afternoon when Hanssen started driving down to the city centre for lunch, the other three in the car with him; Jonny was looking up somewhere to sit and eat on his phone while Jac and Serena talked about nothing in particular and Hanssen tried to work out what he was going to do. He couldn't be a father. He'd tried to go down that road once before and hadn't even met the boy.

"If you park in Gellatly Street car park, it'll be easy to get anywhere," Jonny said. "I'll show you."

Hanssen found himself calmer than he had been in the house last night, or leaving for Dundee this morning, and he started going over his words and actions with a fine tooth comb. He knew now he had been pretty vile towards Serena this morning. To refer to her child as 'spawn' was something he should have known she would take offence to, and in his heart, he couldn't really blame her for it.

"Turn here," Jonny ordered him at the corner of South Marketgait and Gellatly Street, and soon they were parked and getting out of the car. He wanted to be able to apologise for his words and his actions because, as much as they still felt true to his heart, they had hurt Serena and he didn't want that. They had left bruises and cuts on Jonny's face, and he didn't want that either.

If he had been able to remain calm in the face of what terrified him then he would not have said and done those things, and the damage would have been minimal. As it was, though, he had allowed his control to slip during the moments he should have only thought rather than speaking, and this tense atmosphere was the consequence.

It was still cold as he watched Serena pull her coat tightly around herself, though marginally warmer in the town than it was in the rural areas. As the walked down Peter Street to Murraygate, he could hear laughter and music, a female vocal and acoustic guitar ringing out through the frozen air. Jonny was smiling and Hanssen knew how much he loved music. As Jonny and Serena stopped to listen to the young woman with the guitar, Hanssen said, "I'm going to go over there and get a bottle of water," pointing to the miniature sized Tesco across the road.

Jac soon followed him, saying something about chocolate, and it wasn't long before they were at the self-service checkout with bottles of water and a massive slab of chocolate, despite the fact that they were about to have lunch. He opened his wallet and took out some coins and, while he dropped them into the slot, something in his wallet caught his eye.

He took the small rectangle from the clear plastic that covered it and just stared, wondering how on Earth it even got there. "Get your change," he vaguely heard Jac tell him, and he could hear the rustling of her picking up the carrier bag. "Come on! You're holding up the queue!" But he was frozen and confused, unable to understand how a picture he had never taken of a scene he had never witnessed ended up in the wallet that was always near him.

He heard Jac grumble at him and drag him away outside to the music and happiness, and the cold air hit him with a vengeance. Jac snatched the photograph away from him and he saw an almost childlike curiosity in her face. "Who's the kid?" she asked him as she opened her bar of chocolate, referring to the boy of about eight or nine, sitting on Serena's knee on an old dry stone wall, a landscape of fields and hills behind them. She looked up and added, "You don't know, do you?"

He didn't say anything but he knew she knew that he knew there was something strange going on here. "Does it say anything on the back?" he asked, though he was not entirely sure he actually wanted to know. He had an uncomfortable notion that this was the same kind of thing left for Serena – a photograph dated long into the future.

She turned it over and replied, "Just 'Serena and Callum, March 2023.' That's it. How is that even possible?"

"I don't know," he admitted, taking it back from her. He stared at the land behind the woman and child; if it was covered in snow, it would be the double of the area they were staying in at the moment. He put it back in his wallet, resisting the temptation to throw it in the bin and pretend he had never seen it. He wanted control over himself, because last night and this morning had frightened him. He had forgotten how cruel he was capable of being. It was always in him, but he always held back. Only recently had he started poking sharp sticks exactly where he knew would hurt those around him the most.

Part of him wanted to get Serena, hug her and tell her that he was sorry for his behaviour. But his pride didn't allow it and neither did his shield. He feared that as soon as he set foot in that cottage he would succumb to whatever force made him that way; he wasn't so awful most of the time. It felt like all his good was being buried and all his bad was being raised. It wasn't a fair image of him, and Serena had to know that.

They found Serena and Jonny, and Jonny took them down a side street – Reform Street – to some place he said did good TexMex food. When they were seated and eating, Hanssen felt the atmosphere lighten on full stomachs. Jac, Jonny and Serena laughed together while he kept quiet, trying to work out the meaning of the picture. Serena's presence was obvious. There was no mistaking her. But the boy was someone he had never met before. Identical to the child Serena had shown him in the photograph left by her bed, his eyes and hair were dark, his skin the same glowing pale as Serena's.

"You know, I could eat another dozen of these things," Jonny said as he bit into his third steak and chicken fajita.

"What a surprise," giggled Serena, taking a bite out of hers. Hanssen found himself irrationally jealous of how well Jonny and Serena got along; there was nothing in it, of course, but why could he get along with Serena like Jonny did? Those two could laugh from dawn until dusk and still enjoy each other's company. Why couldn't he himself be like that with her?

Jonny was an opposite end of the spectrum to Hanssen; Jonny was loud and passionate and thrived on emotion and expression, while Hanssen was introverted and logical and kept everything he thought and felt to himself unless it was necessary to disclose it. Perhaps that made Jonny the better human being, but he also knew there was no way he could change himself now, even if he tried.

Jac stood up and said, "I'm just going to the bathroom, since my daughter is having great fun squeezing my bladder into oblivion."

"Yeah, I'd better go and all," Jonny added.

When they got up, Hanssen was left in a tense silence with Serena, and it was one neither could break. He couldn't bring himself to apologise, and she met his eyes with a great deal of hurt in her face. He had hurt her. She brushed it off and snapped at him, and she said she didn't need him, but alone with her, without the distractions of others, he could see he had hurt her by reacting the way he had done.

But it was a surprise when Serena finally spoke, only because what she said was not what he expected. "Henrik, I know you're not the type to want the responsibility of a child. But I can tell you, after eighteen years of parenting, that if you try, you will love this child more than anything else in the world. Even if you don't love me, and I know you don't, you can still love your baby. Just think about that."

He had expected the third degree, to be told he was cold, heartless and inhuman, but not to hear her say _that_.

"I..." he tried to begin, but the words, the apology, all the explanations, never found their way out of his mouth. Nothing ever got further than the filter in his brain because that filter gave him a million reasons to keep his mouth shut. After all, there was so much he could do wrong, and so many things he could tell her that would result in her hating him. And despite his manner and behaviour, he didn't hate Serena and he didn't want her hating him. That was why she had never got to know about the mess he made with Maja and Fredrik. That was why she couldn't know that he wasn't willing to risk hurting her and their child.

She sighed and stood up, going to the bar to pay the bill as Jac and Jonny returned. He was well aware that there was only so far he could expect to push Serena before her temper broke, but his very being just now was pushing her to the limit of her patience.

They were all walking back up Reform Street five minutes later, and Hanssen smirked to himself when Jonny noticed the statues outside the shopping centre. He tried to convince Hanssen that it was a good idea to have a picture of all four of them with Desperate Dan and Mini the Minx, but he didn't see the merit in the idea; instead he agreed to take a picture of Jac, Serena and Jonny on Jonny's phone. The flurry of snow around them and the white ice below made them seem brighter and their smiles happier...happier than he had any hope of achieving, at any rate.

They trampled down the street, hearing the loud guitar and singing once more, the woman's voice thoroughly accented with the local tongue. It was only when the singer was in sight that he really listened to the beat of what she played; there were people around her dancing with each other outside HMV, and he couldn't help but understand why Jonny enjoyed music so much. It could pull people together. That much was clear.

Jonny took Jac's hand and started carefully yet haphazardly dancing her around, making himself and her look a little silly as she tried to resist his efforts. It wasn't long before she succumbed and let him lead her, even if she had her reservations about it. Even Jac could let it go once in a while, so why couldn't he?

Hanssen glanced at Serena to see her grinning and tapping the beat into her hip, looking around at the Christmas lights above. A man approached her, stocky and muscular, in his forties, and said, "C'mon. A bonnie lass like you shouldnae be standin' here on yer own wi' the songs on the go." Serena laughed, and Hanssen was jealous once more as she allowed him to start dancing with her. It was his own fault really, he reminded himself. If he wanted to dance with her then he could, if only he could make himself grow a bit more of a backbone.

The solutions were simple but the means to achieve them were far from it. Through the night he had, just for a moment, wanted to reach around and feel where his child was growing inside her, but that would necessitate in admitting he cared, and caring could only get him hurt. Not to mention that, in that room and in that house, every impulse he had that could be a step forward was pushed back down, leaving him frightened to try.

But that would have sounded crazy, to use that as an excuse for his behaviour. Even if it hadn't completely been off his own volition that he shouted at Serena and punched Jonny, 'It's not me, it's the house' didn't sound like a good excuse.

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**Hope this is OK!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me what you think!  
Sarah x**


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: This isn't the way I originally planned this to go, but it's the way it's gone so hey-ho. Thanks, as ever, to everyone who has read and reviewed so far :)**

**Sarah x**

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"Does the bloke in front have _any_ idea how bloody annoying that is?!"

The utterance of frustration made Jac look around, Serena turn to see what was going on and Hanssen look in the rear view mirror.

Jac studied the car carefully. As far as she could tell, the driver was not causing hold up or inconvenience. "What? He's not doing anything wrong!" Jac said

Serena just looked totally confused as to why Jonny was so irritated and, to be honest, so was Jac.

But their confusion did nothing to placate Jonny, who was glaring out the windscreen past Serena. "His wheel trims are about to go flying," he explained. Jac couldn't help but smile at his immaturity. "I hate it when people drive about with those things hanging off!" he quickly defended himself. So he did know how crazy he sounded, then.

"Just don't look then," Serena suggested.

"But I know it's there now," he protested loudly. Hanssen, Jac noticed, was wearing wry and resigned smirk; had he been waiting for Jonny's first real display of immaturity? Even though the men were barely on speaking terms over Serena, Jac knew Hanssen had become quite fond of Jonny, whose personality and brightness was the remedy to his pessimism and darkness.

Five minutes later, they were stuck at traffic light on the Kingsway, waiting for an accident to be cleared and all lanes to be reopened, or else for the traffic to trickle through sometime in the next few decades.

"It's annoying me," Jonny warned.

"Oh, pipe down," Serena grinned. "It's a wheel trim. No big deal."

"It isn't _a_ wheel trim. Three of them are loose!" he argued back. Jac shook her head in amused despair and stared out the window at the unfamiliar and snow covered city. She shouldn't have been surprised, but he wasn't going to let it go until that car was miles in front of them. "I'm gonna go and push them back on," he decided.

Jac's head snapped around, as did Serena and Hanssen's. "You can't do _that_!" Jac shouted, alarmed that he wanted to get out of the car on a busy dual carriageway at rush hour over dislodged wheel trims. Not to mention that the driver could well get out and start a fight if Jonny were to lay a hand, or any other extremity, on his car. A fight in the middle of the Kingsway would not be a good idea.

"Course I can!" he grinned; he unclipped his seatbelt and opened the door.

"Jonny-" she began, but he had shut the door and jogged ahead before she could say anything else.

"What an idiot," Serena and Hanssen said in unison. Finally, something they agreed on. Jac watched as the father of her child drew his foot back and kicked the back passenger side wheel trim back on. He did the same with the back driver's side and ran forward, careful to avoid getting run over, and did the same at the front driver's side as well.

A thumb appeared out the driver's side window and Jonny slapped the man's hand as he passed on his way back to the car. So that was another thing they got away with here, was it? Kicking other people's cars, if it was to achieve something other than aggravation. "I can't believe you just did that," Jac informed him when he was back on the car and putting his seatbelt on.

"Told you it'd be fine!" he smiled brightly. Jac just smiled. How could she not? Even Hanssen was smirking.

Traffic moved slowly but surely until they were on the A92 once more. Serena soon made a suggestion that surprised them all. "Why don't we go to Arbroath?" she asked.

"What on Earth for?" Hanssen sighed, and Jac didn't like the exasperated tone he constantly saved for his reply to Serena every time she spoke.

Serena, however, seemed not to be fazed by it as she grinned, "To see the crazy people with the swords, of course!" Hanssen glared at her and Jonny laughed. "But really. It's been a stressful day. Why don't we just take a wander? Take a walk around Keptie Park or something?"

"At night?" Hanssen raised an eyebrow at the idea.

"In the dark?" Jonny added.

"In the snow?" demanded Jac.

"What's wrong with that?" Serena asked.

"It's bloody freezing!" Jac protested.

"That's what your coat is for," she smiled, and Jac couldn't help but take note of that motherly, maternal tone to the woman's voice. "Come on. We can't just stay in the house every night, can we?" Jac realised quite suddenly that Serena just wanted to cut the time she had to spend in Hanssen's sole company, because they were still disagreeing over their baby.

Jonny seemed to understand as soon as Jac did, because the glance they exchanged told her to just agree and overrule Hanssen for Serena's sake. "Aye, OK then," Jonny spoke up. "We can take an hour to chill out, can't we? No pun intended," he added, causing Jac to roll her eyes at him.

"Yeah," Jac agreed. "A little bit of snow won't kill us, will it?" Of course, it wasn't a little bit, but Arbroath was on the coast, so perhaps there was going to be less snow there. She could only hope. Hanssen did not speak but she knew he would uphold democracy and do what the majority wanted.

By the time they reached Arbroath and were parked, night had most definitely fallen, the sky above them pitch black, clear of almost everything expect bright stars, the moon and the occasional thin cloud. It was cold but not unbearable once the body got accustomed to the extremes.

It was quite sad, Jac decided, that Serena was looking for ways to spend less time alone with Hanssen. When they had arrived here they had been happy, relaxed and really quite passionate, if Jonny's story of walking in on them was anything to go by. The man was the father of Serena's child and he was having nothing to do with her or the baby.

When Hanssen parked the car on Keptie Street, outside a garage, Jac was helped out of the car by Jonny; even though she was relentlessly offered to sit in the front, she preferred to sit with Jonny. That, and she couldn't see as much of the chaotic roads and their users from the back seat. "Thanks," she muttered, manoeuvring her bump out of the car.

She heard swearing from the open door to the garage, and a young man of about seventeen or eighteen stormed to the front exit, shouting back into the garage, "Stick the car up yer fuckin' arse then!"

An older, deeper voice called back, "I'd sooner stick it up yours, pal!"

The boy turned around, walking backwards past them, and roared back, "Another three years o' this! Fuckin' kill me now!" Just then, as the two men were moving out of each other's earshot, the young man slipped on the ice, landing on his side into the soft snow. Jac glanced at Jonny, seeing through the orange sodium light that he was fighting back laughter. The boy got up and stalked off, pulling his phone out.

Jac shook her head to herself and took Jonny's hand with a smile; she felt quite at ease and content just now. It was like everything, after years of loneliness and fear, was falling into place. She had found a man, and a normal man at that. She was due do give birth to their daughter next month. All they needed was the house and the dog to complete Jonny's idea of their family. It could be a beautiful thing. But then she was involved. It was bound to go pear shaped.

But for now all was fine, and it was a conscious effort her to refrain from doing anything to blow it apart; she made sure she let him in when it was necessary because she simply did not want to lose him. If she were to lose him, she could just about guarantee it would be her doing.

She looked over at Serena and Hanssen, who were arguing in a hushed tone that Jac couldn't hear until she moved forward towards them a bit.

"Do you know what?" Serena said, holding her hands up. "I don't even want to talk about it. But bear in mind in ten years when your son doesn't even recognise you that this is _your decision_. I haven't stopped you seeing him or anything like that. This is you being a coward!" she half-shouted. Jac had been waiting for Serena's anger to bubble up to the surface.

"You're being ridiculous!" he argued. "As far as I am aware, you have two perfectly valid options, both of which can be achieved without me."

"Yeah? And they are?" Serena demanded. Jac looked at Jonny, and they both knew what they options were. Neither had any idea how far this was going to go in the middle of an unfamiliar street. So much for the relaxing walk around the pond.

"You raise the child on your own. Like you said, for all the help you had from Edward, you might as well be a single parent," he reasoned.

"And the second option?"

"You put a stop to this."

"Abortion."

"Yes."

Silence fell onto them all, broken only by the sound of the machinery and local radio from inside the garage. Even in the lowest of light, Serena's fury was evident. "How _dare_ you?!" Serena shouted. "You want me to kill our – _your_ – child?!" Hanssen didn't have time to answer before Serena lost her temper and attempted to push him. He, however, was stronger than her and she slipped backwards into the garage and onto the concrete floor.

The machinery suddenly stopped and footsteps approached as Jonny dropped Jac's hand and Hanssen stood frozen. Two men, one far shorter than the other. "Alright, darlin'," said the shorter of the two. Jonny took her by the arm, the short man taking the other and the taller mechanic lifting her back. "Are ye hurt, hun?"

"I think I'm OK," replied Serena, but she did seem a bit dazed.

"She's pregnant," Jac said. As she said it, Serena's hand fell onto her abdomen and she shut her eyes – she was in pain.

"Derek," the taller man said. "We need tae get her up tae the infirmary." Derek, as he had been addressed, nodded his head.

"Do yehs ken where it is?" Derek asked. Jac, Jonny and Hanssen shook their heads, all slightly stunned at what had happened. "Kev, get me the keys tae that BMW Jack just finished." Hanssen stood still, watching in silence. Why wasn't he helping? Why wasn't he checking her over. "It's OK, sweetheart," he assured Serena. He put a hand on her back but she shrugged it off, making Jac smirk. Kev came back with the keys and handed them to Derek.

"We're doctors," Jac said. "Well, he's a nurse," she added, pointing to Jonny. "We can check her over."

"Would ye not be better doin' that at a hospital?" Jac tilted her head in acknowledgement that, yes, Serena would be better in an accident and emergency department than on a cold, icy street. "I'll take her up and youse can follow?" he suggested. Hanssen said nothing but handed Jonny the keys to the car. "I'll be back in a sec."

Derek ran around and they heard him tell the other mechanic to lock up and call it a night. "Happy now?" Serena demanded of Hanssen. "You may have got your wish," she winced, her hand pressed against her womb and child, clearly pained. Her dark eyes were shining and Jac could tell she was close to tears over this pain, both the physical pain and the emotional trauma Hanssen seemed intent on inflicting on her.

A silver BMW 5 Series appeared and Derek jumped out and helped Serena into the car, waiting for Jonny to start the car and Jac and Hanssen to get in and put their seatbelts on. Jac glared at Hanssen from the back seat, unable to afford him no blame for what had just happened. Even if he hadn't pushed her himself, if he hadn't suggested abortion, Serena would not have attempted to push him and she would not have fallen.

They set off through the dark, following the BMW around the corner, and Jac could only hope it all hadn't gone badly wrong. She could see that Hanssen did feel guilty – he wouldn't still be here, following a mechanic and the mother of his child to an A&E department if he didn't – but she didn't know if he could swallow his pride and apologise for his behaviour, and its potential consequences.

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**Hope this is alright!  
Please feel free to drop me a review and tell me your thoughts!  
Sarah x**


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: Hello! Thanks again to everyone who has read and reviewed! This is the 12th chapter :)**

**Sarah x**

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Serena closed her eyes and tried to block out the pain in her side; it was worse there than anywhere else, probably because it was the part of her body that hit the ground, before she could put her hands out to break her fall. She was worried for the safety of her son more than anything else. She could not think of this baby as a girl, and she had the distinct impression that the boy in all those photographs was her son.

Her manners unfailing, she said to Derek, "I can give you money for petrol."

"Aye, if you want to blow up the injectors," he grinned. She gave him a confused glance and he briefly turned to grin at her as she pulled out her purse. "This thing's a turbo diesel. If ye compress petrol like ye dae wi' diesel, it'll wreck the engine. And it's fine, darlin'. It's no mine and the infirmary's just up the way here."

She did not reply, distracted from his thick Scots voice by a small photograph in her purse. She found herself staring at her son and a young redheaded woman sitting on the bonnet of a BMW not unlike this one, but modernised and deep metallic blue in colour. He looked about twenty or twenty-one, his arms around the redhead's waist, the glint of a diamond engagement ring on her slim finger. She looked at him like Serena knew she sometimes looked at Hanssen, and she realised this woman was to end up her daughter-in-law, if Serena's unborn son was still alive.

She turned the photo over and read:

_Callum and Emma_

_ June 19__th__ 2035_

_ Callum's 21__st__ birthday_

This was the second time this girl, Emma, had appeared. Who was she?

The car came to a stop in a car park, and Serena watched Jonny park Hanssen's car next to them, opening the door to get herself out. To her frustration, it was Jonny and Derek who came to her aid when she lost her footing in the snow shutting the door; as much as she liked Jonny and appreciated Derek's efforts, it was Hanssen she wanted. She wanted him to show some care, some emotion that didn't tell her he hated her for carrying his child.

It wasn't long before Jac caught up with them, and Serena could see the woman glaring daggers at Hanssen. She had tried to keep herself out of it all day, but now it was clear Jac held very little understanding for Hanssen's approach, despite how alike they were in many respects. Even though they both struggled with the idea of attachment and love, Jac had managed to steady herself slightly, but Hanssen didn't appear to even be trying to do the same. And _that_, Serena knew, was what was riling Jac.

It wasn't long before Serena was lying on a bed, waiting on someone to come with an ultrasound. Derek had ensured she was comfortable and then left them to it, and Jac and Jonny sat with her, but Hanssen had refused to stay, instead sitting in the waiting reception. Serena couldn't understand his detachment and complete lack of care. Even Edward loved his child, and he had more flaws than he had redeeming qualities, and his stupidity often hurt Eleanor, even though it was rarely truly intentional.

"I don't get what his problem is," she confessed quietly.

Jonny replied, "He's being a moron."

"Not helpful, Jonny," Jac sighed. "Look, he's obviously not able to process all this. He should be able to," she added when Serena opened her mouth to point out he was a grown man and not a teenage boy. "But he's got the mentality of a young, immature man because he's never taken on any personal responsibility."

Serena sighed and rested her hand on her painful side; it wasn't half as sore as before now that she had been given painkillers. When examined, she discovered some rather deep bruising where she had hit the floor.

She wanted Hanssen. Maybe it was because he didn't want to be around her that she wanted him even more, but she felt he should be involved. This was his future too. Even he could not live pretending this had never happened...could he?

A woman from obs and gynae approached with a warm smile. "I'm Caitlin Scott," she introduced herself. "You must be Serena," she added, rubbing alcohol gel into her hands. "So. What's happened here?" she asked as she started the ultrasound machine.

"I slipped on the ice and fell onto the concrete floor of a garage," she explained. The realisation that she wasn't the only woman that had fallen in a garage today hit her quite suddenly; Iona Murray had fallen from halfway up a ramp and her baby was absolutely fine.

"I see," Caitlin replied. "This'll be cold," she warned. Despite the warning, she still shivered as the cold gel hit her skin. "That's a nasty bruise," Caitlin noted. "Can't have been much fun trying to get up after that."

"We had to help her up," Jonny supplied. "Me and two mechanics." Serena smiled slightly at him and realised she hadn't actually thanked any of them for their efforts. To ease her own mind, she reassured herself that they knew she was grateful.

"Well, your baby seems to be OK," Caitlin smiled. "I mean, you took a bad fall, so it's gonna hurt like hell but your baby seems fine." Serena breathed out deeply, relieved to hear she had not hurt her baby in trying to hurt its father. "You've been lucky."

Serena smiled softly, and she noticed the looks of relief upon Jac and Jonny's faces. "Very lucky. I'm going to have to be more careful." Caitlin smiled at her. "Can I see him?" asked Serena, surprised by her own timidity as she asked to see her son, even if not for the first time.

Caitlin turned the monitor and Serena stared at the grainy image. "How do you know it's a he?" Jonny asked.

Serena shrugged. "Just a feeling," she lied.

"Well, _he_ is about ten weeks," Caitlin said.

"Can I have a copy, please? And one for his dad?" Serena asked, not taking her eyes from the screen.

"Of course," replied Caitlin, handing her a paper towel to wipe the gel off her skin. "I'll just go and get that, and I'll get the consultant to sign you out." She walked away and Serena was left to consider what she was to do. Was there any point in trying to convince Hanssen that fatherhood could be good for him? Did he have it in him to listen to her? To actually _try_? All he was trying at the moment was her patience, and that had worn a bit thin.

"Do you want Hanssen?" Jac guessed. Was it that obvious? "I can go and get him."

Serena closed her eyes and leaned back. "There's no point, is there? He doesn't want anything to do with us." It was the first time she had thought of and described herself and her son as a single unit, and it was becoming increasingly clear that Hanssen didn't want to be a part of that unit.

"He will do," Jonny said confidently. "Once he gets his arse in gear." Unfortunately, Serena didn't share his confidence. Jac was uncharacteristically quiet, however, especially after her concise and plausible summation of Hanssen's problem. She was not sympathetic. She was not harsh. She just spoke what she believed to be the truth.

Her eyes still closed, she heard one of them get up and walk away, presumably to tell Hanssen she was OK. "You don't need him, Serena," Jac reminded her; it must have been Jonny who had got up. "You said so yourself."

Serena opened her eyes and stared at Jac for a moment. She looked like she wanted to help but she was also resigned to the fact there wasn't a whole lot she could do. "Maybe not, but it would be nice to have him around," she admitted quietly. "Well, it would be nice if he could be the man I know he can be," she amended.

"You've got a lot of faith in him," Jac said.

"No," Serena contradicted quietly. "No, I have a lot of faith in who he _can_ be. The man he is just now doesn't have my trust or my faith." She did not like to confess that, actually, Hanssen's behaviour had alienated her just a little, because even through this dispute and its consequences, she couldn't help but feel something for him. He had grown on her, even though he was doing nothing to earn her trust or her affection. "And I hope he knows that."

"I'm sure he does," Jac assured her. "And if he doesn't, I'm sure Jonny's given him something to think about."

Serena sighed and fumbled in her coat pocket for her phone. She hadn't told Eleanor anything, and she considered for a moment hiding the fact that there had been an accident. If there was no real damage done, apart from the need for painkillers, was there any point in worrying her? After all, Eleanor was a worrier. She had been even as a child. Was it worth upsetting her?

Jonny returned, and Serena was almost disappointed to see that Hanssen had not followed, though she expecting as much. She saw the irritation in Jonny's face and decided he must have disagreed with Hanssen again, and Serena, again, had expected it. It was becoming a cycle – something happened, Jac sat with Serena and Jonny went to go and disagree with Hanssen. She was becoming slightly tired of it but nothing she said or did broke that cycle, no matter what she tried.

"What's he saying?" she asked, unsure if she wanted to know or not.

"That it's good you're not too badly hurt, and he wouldn't wish a miscarriage on you," he replied.

"That's big of him," she snorted. Did he really think that showing the very bare minimum common decency was enough to absolve him of the things she accused him of before she fell? "I'm telling you, Jonny," she warned him solemnly, "if you _ever_ treat Jac or your daughter like that, I will personally make sure you don't get the chance to have a second child."

Jonny smiled and Jac took his hand; it never stopped surprising when Jac initiated a display of affection, however small, with Jonny. She knew it was significant to the cold redhead where it was not so much for others. "There's no danger of _that_," Jonny grinned. "My wee princesses."

Jac didn't look impressed with the description but when she looked at the floor, hidden from Jonny by her curtain of ginger hair, her little smile gave it away just how much it meant that Jonny treated her so well.

Caitlin was upon them soon enough with a form to sign, some painkillers and an envelope containing two scan pictures, and they were suddenly in the reception, with Hanssen, before Serena could prepare herself. It was all she could do to halt him before he reached the exit and hand him the scan of his son. He said nothing, in fact he barely even looked properly, and walked away to the car, unlocking it as he strode through the snow.

Jonny linked his arm with Serena's in case she fell again, until she was safely in the passenger seat of the car. The atmosphere as Hanssen started the car was strained and tense, and Jac and Jonny spoke to each other only so there was no awkward silence. Serena listened to them make a list of things they still needed to get for their daughter...it seemed Jonny wanted her to have one of those princess veil canopies over her cot, preferably lilac, and Jac wanted to buy some more clothes, reasoning that baby's were not careful creatures when it came to being sick.

"What do you want to call her?" Jonny asked.

"I don't know," Jac admitted. "Maybe we should wait and see what she's like."

Serena smiled, "I agree with Jac. What if you call her Jenny and she looks more like a Jessie?" She heard quiet laughter from the back, glad that Jac and Jonny were happier than she and Hanssen were. While they looked forward to having a daughter, though Serena was more than aware that the prospect frightened Jac to death at times, Serena found herself wondering what kind of life any child with Hanssen as a father would have, if this was how he was going to be over the whole thing.

Through the dark she saw the light in living room of the cottage was on...perhaps they had just forgotten to put it out. Nobody else seemed concerned when they approached the locked door, Jonny once more holding on to Serena in an almost paranoid fashion. They stepped in and went to the living room, and she was relieved to find there was not a hair out of place.

She noted that Hanssen had drained white once more, rubbing his temples, obviously in the grips of a killer headache once more. She didn't offer him any aid because she knew that he would not take it, and instead followed Jac and Jonny to the kitchen to start making dinner.

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**Hope this is OK!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me your thoughts!  
Sarah x**


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: This is, um, weird. That's all I can say. Thanks as always to everyone who has read and reviewed so far :)**

**Sarah x**

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Hanssen sat in the living room long after Jac, Jonny and Serena had gone to bed. His head was pounding still, and had been since he walked into the house. He just wanted normality. Was that too much to ask? For him to have one healthy, normal, calm relationship seemed an impossibility. Was it that there was something wrong with Serena, or was it that there was something wrong with him?

He wanted to run away but he didn't want to hurt Serena. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Serena. He was coming to realise as he distanced himself from her that he felt more for her than he had ever intended to. It hurt him to know that his behaviour hurt Serena, even if it wasn't meant.

Even after months of being with her, he didn't know what was driving him to love her. She didn't make life easy. She had a daughter. She bore the emotional scars of a marriage based on alcohol fuelled mental, emotional and occasionally physical abuse. She had a concrete wall around her. But so did he. One day, he knew, something would surely happen to collapse his defences, but he tried to build them stronger every day.

He stood up and found the bottle of whisky in the kitchen that Jonny had bought. He wasn't a drinker but he hoped it would kill the pain in his head; he would have taken painkillers but every time he went to take them the pain evaporated, only to return when there was no relief at hand. He couldn't understand that at all.

A glass in his hand, he silently paced down the hall and opened the bedroom door. Through the dim moonlight he could watch Serena as she slept, her hand unconsciously on her abdomen as if the action was going to protect her child. In the vulnerability of sleep, her face absent of make up but not of worry, he could see the woman that still existed within her. The young woman, sweet and loving, that Edward Campbell hadn't managed to destroy was still there, hidden by the walls she built in the knowledge that anyone who could see her for who she was could destroy what she held most dear: her humanity.

Hanssen had done the same.

He took a drink and closed the door, walking carefully back to the living room. He sat down and drained the glass, instantly pouring another. It was working; the pain in his head was diminishing somewhat, still there but not nearly as intense. He wondered briefly what Serena would say if she was sitting her with him when he remembered his promise not to get drunk. He would never raise his hand to her, of course, but he could understand her caution.

He switched the table lamp on, not very keen on tripping over the coffee when he eventually decided he was going to go to bed, and saw, lying on the table, a DVD. He picked it up; it was a plain rewritable disc, marked in black pen: _When The Master Calls The Roll_ – _Memphis, Tennessee, USA – July 17__th__ 2029._

Curious, he put it in the player and switched the television on. It started playing where it had last been stopped, and he saw a young man of about fifteen or sixteen, a young woman of about the same age, and who he recognised to be Jac, Jonny and Serena all on a stage. The redheaded girl standing between the boy and Jac was singing.

"..._oh, my darling William Lee, take me to the alter_," sang the girl who stood between Jac and the boy, her voice dark and enthralling. "_I don't have strength to watch you as you leave; but my love will never falter_."

"_Oh, my darling Mary Ann_," sang the boy, strumming a guitar at the same time. His voice was deep and rough but held the same darkness as the redhead's. "_The march to war is calling; somewhere far across the Southern lands; are bands of brothers falling; my tender bride, the tides demand; that I leave you with your mother; with my father's rifle in one hand; and your locket in the other_."

As Hanssen drained the glass and poured yet another, the guitar picked up and all five – the girl, the boy, Serena, Jac and Jonny – started singing. "_Lo, the season may come; lo, the season may go; beware the storm clouds gather; __take heed dear mortal soul_."

"_When the master calls the roll_," the girl and boy sang alone, minus the voices of Jac, Jonny and Serena.

Without warning the television was blank. He looked around and was startled to see two children standing in the corner. A boy and a girl, the boy looking at least a year or two older than the girl, who was blonde and pale. They boy was also extremely pale but his hair was a sandy brown, darker than the girl's. "How did you get in here?" he demanded of them.

They didn't say a word, their stares fixed in the opposite corner. He looked around and found two adults, a man and a woman, standing there. The woman spoke, and Hanssen was surprised that it was directly to him. "You are a man of many contradictions," she said. Her voice was soft and gentle and yet somehow terrifying at the same time, thick blonde curls falling around her face. "Too strong to admit defeat but too weak to accept his fate."

"Compassionate enough to be a doctor but too cold to accept his own sons," added the man, stepping forward. Was this an effect of the alcohol or had he finally lost the plot?

The little girl advanced on him. "Too much an adult to rely on others but too much a child for others to rely on him."

The boy also took a stride forward. "Intelligent enough to know right from wrong but too foolish to act on it." Hanssen stood up and backed away towards the door, frightened by the appearance of four people out of nowhere.

"How do you know about that?" he asked of them, realising that he had never spoken of Fredrik in this house, and he had never told Jac, Jonny or Serena about his actions and their consequences all those years ago.

"We know everything," the blonde girl advanced and smiled in a frighteningly sweet fashion; her glee was threatening and unnerving as she informed him of the fact they could see what he had never revealed.

The boy stepped forward again, closer to Hanssen, and the man and woman approached at his side. The woman added, "Do you fail to understand the love the woman who will bear your son holds for you?"

He involuntarily looked around in the direction of the bedroom and thought of Serena sleeping peacefully. A cold chill fell over the room. The condensation on the inside of the windows turned to ice in the lamplight, the drops glistening as they froze halfway through their journey down the panes. He took a drink from his glass in some mad hope that it was going to banish this vision but it did not help. If anything, their figures stood out brighter and paler than they had done before. For the first time that he could remember, cornered in this unfamiliar room, he was well and truly petrified.

"You are _nothing_," the man said. Hanssen took in the visible lifelessness of his bright skin and knew for certain that these people were long dead, from this world no longer. "A man who cannot love is _nothing_."

"A man who does not want to love is worth even less," the woman snarled. "You abandon those who love you for your own protection. You are a pathetic excuse for a human being."

"I do want to love her," Hanssen argued before he could stop himself. The combination of alcohol and fear hampered his rationality. "I love Serena." It was the first time he had said it aloud and he was surprised to find it was perfectly true. He had felt it before, but had tried to ignore it in the hope it was a trick or a mistake.

The little girl was laughing shrilly. "You do not treat people you love like that. You do not deny them," she informed him, her voice quickly becoming a cold, harsh hiss. For a girl of about nine years old, she spoke with remarkable articulacy. It was with a start that he heard the door lock shut behind him, trapping him in this room. "Why do you deny them?"

He remained silent, trying to avoid his greatest weakness: that he allowed fear to cripple him until he was incapable of speaking the truth. He was scared of everything. He was even afraid of fear itself. He was afraid of what these people were telling him. That he was nothing. That he could not love. That he could not be loved. That he did not understand Serena like he thought he did. That he was not human, but instead the monster they described to him.

"Why?" the boy repeated.

"Why?" said the man.

"Why?" the woman asked fiercely.

"Why?" they demanded together. "Why? Why? Why?" Every time they said it, their voices became more disconnected from each other until it was just a sea of voices, the same word losing its meaning as he failed to hear it. The lamp was suddenly out, leaving him in darkness broken only by white figures advancing towards him.

Through the racket he heard a knocking on the door and an order to open up, but his head was searing with pain and incomprehensible noise, so much that he could fully process that one command. The glass shattered on the floor when it fell out of his hand; he found his knees bent as he gripped his head, trying to dissipate the pain to no avail. The people, the ghosts of what must have been a young family, closed in around him and left him with no way out.

"Henrik!" a voice shouted from the other side of the door. Serena. He would have known her voice anywhere. "Open the door before I kick it down!" In the back of his mind he knew she was in no condition to kick anything without hurting herself. It was only with enormous effort that he could turn around and fumble for the old sliding lock. He took a step back as Serena pushed the door open and turned on the light. Through the haze of pain he saw Jac and Jonny standing together a bit further back, his arm protectively around her waist.

He could begin to understand now that there were more important things in this life than his own fear. It dawned upon him that Serena, the woman he had treated so badly and yet still looked at him with love and concern, had barely had a proper family. Of the years her little family lived as a unit, Edward had spent most of that time barely there, and the rest of the time a drunk lodger who made life miserable – Serena had told him as much herself. Despite her faults and her habits and her mouthiness, did she not deserve to have a real family, one that at least attempted to function?

But even though he knew the fear was not of as much significance as Serena's future, and of their child's, he could not help but let it into his heart. The fear of hurting them was greater than it had ever been.

"Henrik?" Serena asked cautiously, her eyes searching his and burning through him. He couldn't speak and, for some reason, he felt tears building in the back of his throat. He could not stop them pouring down his cheeks, the fear, the pain, the past, the present and the future all releasing itself as one entity as it broke his walls down. He tried to believe he could stay for her and the baby but he could never be sure of himself. He could never be sure of his own strength; it disappeared too quickly and far too easily.

Serena pulled him into a tight hug, her fingers stroking the back of his neck as she attempted to soothe him. Suddenly she was the one comforting him, even though he had done nothing but shut her out and show her false hatred. She was more than he deserved, especially after all his mistakes, but still here she was, holding him tight as agony ripped through his head and his heart. His own cowardice was hurting him, and he knew now that if he did not at least try to be a decent human being, he could never forgive himself.

Into her ear, he whispered, "I am not father material." He waited for her to reply but she didn't, and he almost let it all out to tell her about everything that happened concerning Maja and Fredrik, but it was more than he could bear. Perhaps it was for his own selfish reasons but instead he said, "I can't promise I will be of any use, but I will try. I will try for you."

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**Hope this is alright!  
Please feel free to leave me a review and tell me what you think of it!  
Sarah x**


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